Page 13 - Bexar County Medical Society Purchasing Directory

MEDICAL
TECHNOLOGY

before lister sprayed carbolic acid in the operating theater, a pa- dr. Mark Stibich, their doctorates from Johns Hopkins University,
tient could as likely undergo a successful procedure only to die from founded XENEX in 2008. After learning about the use of pulsed
‘ward fever.’ Yet in the century between lister’s death and the release xenon bulbs overseas to combat airborne tuberculosis, they knew
of XENEX lightStrike robots, disinfection has relied on 19th Cen- the technology had potential application in environmental disinfec-
tury chemistry, with only incremental improvements. A 2012 Florida tion of healthcare spaces.
study concluded that little had changed since a similar study four XENEX grew from a concept in the Houston Technology Cen-
decades prior. ter. Early on, San Antonio’s Morris Miller was introduced to Julie
Now, two young inventors and a San Antonio businessman have and Mark. Miller, a co-founder of Rackspace, was eager to invest
made a quantum leap (quite literally) in technology that is proven after he heard the clarity with which the two doctors expressed their
more effective than manual cleaning in killing pathogens as tough mission.
as Clostridium difficile (C.diff) spores, not to mention bacterium “That’s always a critical question for me: What’s the mission? If
and viruses. it’s ‘to build a big company and make money,’ it’s the wrong answer.
Not that one replaces the other, but together, according to Julie and Mark, on the other hand, had a passionate reason: ‘We
XENEX CEO Morris Miller, “We give hospital environmental serv- want to stop the needless deaths caused by HAIs and reduce the
ices workers the one-two punch needed to really make a difference.” pain and suffering caused by these infections.’”
A difference documented in 26 peer-reviewed studies and now They also explained the size of the issue, and its costs to society.
seen locally in University Health System, baptist Orthopedic Hos- “In the U.S. alone, two million patients get them each year after
pital, brooke Army Medical Center (bAMC), and Audie l. Murphy going to the hospital,” recalls Miller, “and a hundred thousand die.”
vA Hospital – all using lightStrike technology to disinfect rooms. That’s approximately the same number of deaths as from AIdS,
XENEX robots are in about 450 hospitals, surgery centers, long breast cancer and auto accidents combined in the U.S., and as an-
term care and skilled nursing facilities in the U.S., U.K., Europe, timicrobial resistance increases, HAIs become even more life threat-
Asia, Africa, Middle East and South America. ening and costly. The impact on the economy is estimated to be
Two infectious disease epidemiologists, dr. Julie Stachowiak and between $32 billion up to $40 billion, just in out-of-pocket health-
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