Raising hospital cleaning standards

At the 9th Healthcare Infection Society (HIS) International Conference, Lyon, France, Hygiena sponsored an educational workshop on how to assess hospital cleanliness. The symposium, Introducing an Approved Standard for Measuring Hospital Cleanliness, featured a panel of distinguished speakers who considered the question: ‘How can we reduce healthcare-associated infection with better management and control of the environment?’ 

The aim of the workshop was to provide an understanding of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) hygiene monitoring technology in the context of the first government approved standard to be developed for cleaning in hospitals. Denmark has led the way in the adoption of the standard, followed by Sweden, but there is now the potential for other countries to follow their example, as they seek to drive improvement in hospital hygiene. 

There are many applications of the ATP test that have been developed over 30 years but the most widely used is that of an objective cleaning verification test. ATP is the universal energy carrier that is present in all living things including body fluids and bacteria. When ATP reacts with the enzyme luciferase, it produces a release of energy in the form of light, called bioluminescence. This enables the presence of ATP to be detected as a light output. ATP test systems use a detection swab to collect a sample from the surface to be tested. The swab is then activated and inserted into a reader and a numeric reading (Relative Light Units, RLU) is produced.