Setra Blog

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals are expanding their isolation room capacity. Currently, Brownfield Regional Medical Center is using the AIIR Watch to create extra isolation rooms for any infectious disease patients in their facility.

Reopening schools is always a challenge, made even more difficult this year by the pandemic. Now schools must also consider how to create a safe environment for both students and staff to use. SEEM Middle School was looking to do just that. SEEM is a collaborative school, meaning their students come from several communities because they were not making enough progress in either their previous placement or home district. With such a variety of students, SEEM is considered high needs and thus is staying open as their students benefit from in-person classes.

The dental industry is currently one of the most at-risk industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since dental procedures create significant aerosolized particles, the risk for contracting COVID-19 or other airborne diseases is high, and thus many dentists are looking for ways to make their offices safer for patients and staff. DCAA Dental was searching for a simple, accurate, economical, and highly visible method to visualize whether or not a room was safely negatively pressurized.

In critical environments handling dangerous viruses and materials, it is crucial to maintain HVAC integrity. This particular facility, a BSL-4 high containment lab, is looking for a solution to routinely calibrate their sensors. The containment rooms in this lab have concrete walls eighteen inches thick where they test dangerous strains in positive pressure containment suits tethered by dedicated airflow tubes.

Mechanical equipment requires precise elements to ensure the system works properly. Without accurate components, a mechanical system can't function. Manufacturers of such systems are reliant on the producers of the components for their equipment. The manufacturer in question provides a mechanical system used in all climate conditions across the globe; in this application, accurate readings within a short system operation time are critical.

Undergoing renovation and expansion leads to a hospital reconsidering its critical environment monitoring for the present and the future. The medical facility in question was looking for room pressure monitors that would meet existing and any new codes and guidelines released in upcoming years. They didn't want to install room pressure monitors to be only minimally code compliant; rather, they were looking to meet requirements and monitor many ASHRAE Standard 170 spaces that don't strictly require monitors. Monitoring is crucial for proper cleanliness conditions, and the Joint Commission and CMS inspectors tend to scrutinize all ASHRAE 170 pressurized spaces.

Hospitals face a number of daunting tasks each day without also having to worry about the performance of the equipment on which they rely. The particular medical facility in question experienced abundant issues related to the products they employed. A lack of after-sale support combined with the unsophisticated UI of room pressure monitors and the vendor's reluctance to partner with the facility's BMS controls engineers escalated into long-term compatibility obstacles with the other networked devices. Coming up against these issues led the facility to realize they needed simple and intuitive customizable features that didn't require specialized programming knowledge to set up. In addition to all these issues related to room pressure monitors, they were searching for a solution to make their compounding pharmacy USP 800 compliant with regular particle counting, which they define as an interval of once every 15 minutes.