A key victory against germs

With computers becoming as common as stethoscopes in medical exam rooms, health care officials are awakening to an unpleasant realization: The keystrokes that make it so easy to look up a test result or enter data into a patient’s medical chart are spreading germs.

Keyboards have emerged as a culprit in hospitals’ fight against infection. Harmful strains of bacteria can linger up to 24 hours on keyboards. A single touch can contaminate doctors’ and nurses’ fingers, research indicates, allowing them to cross-contaminate patients.

A Coeur d’Alene firm is one of several keyboard makers vying for market share in the drive toward better keyboard sanitation.

In May, Advanced Input Systems released Medigenic, a flat-screened keyboard made to be wiped down with moist, antibacterial tissues. A blinking light alerts users that the keyboard needs to be cleaned. Sensors track when each wipe-down is completed.

The keyboard retails for about $250 – much more than the standard $12 keyboard.

But with 90,000 people dying every year of infections they picked up in U.S. hospitals, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics, Advanced Input Systems hopes to convince hospitals that their product is a good buy.

“We’d like to see it going to hospitals around the country,” said Randy Noland, AIS’ marketing director. “If this prevents one infection, it will more than pay for itself.”

Patients who develop infections typically stay eight to 10 days longer in the hospital, raising care costs an average of $38,000, according to Noland. Insurance companies are starting to look carefully at those figures, questioning costs related to infections picked up in hospitals, he said.

Several other U.S. manufacturers also sell keyboards to the infection-control market, though Noland said Medigenic is the only one with a built-in cleaning reminder. Patents are pending on the design.

Recent keyboard studies are enough to make everyone reach for a bottle of hand sanitizer. Germs multiple quite fruitfully on their plastic surfaces, the studies indicate.

A microbiologist at the University of Arizona found that keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats. (The average keyboard contains 3,295 germs per square inch, while a toilet seat contains only 49.)

At the University of North Carolina Health Care System, a test of 25 keyboards found at least two types of bacteria on each. Every keyboard had a strain of bacteria responsible for bloodstream infections; 13 other types of bacteria were also detected.

AIS spent two years developing Medigenic. The keyboard was actually commissioned by a hospital in England, a country where outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus bacteria account for the deaths of nearly 1,000 hospital patients each year.

A flat screen was critical to Medigenic’s design, to prevent germs from lurking between the keys, Noland said. However, maintaining the feel of a conventional keyboard was also essential. “You didn’t want to affect people’s speed or accuracy,” he added.

AIS’ final design was a conventional keyboard sealed in a waterproof, silicon cover. It types like a regular keyboard, and unplugging it isn’t necessary for cleaning, Noland said.

Medigenic debuted in mid-June at a meeting of infection-control professionals in Florida. Noland is in Seattle this week, hawking it at the World Congress of Dentistry’s meeting. The keyboard is also making test runs at hospitals all over the country.

Medigenic represents a new market for AIS, whose main focus is manufacturing control panels that end up on other companies’ medical equipment. AIS is still testing out the depth of market for infection-control keyboards, Noland said.

At iKEY, a Texas firm that sells 40,000 keyboards every year, infection-control is the fastest-growing market niche, said Sales Manager Scott Driskill. The company started courting the medical market in 2003. About 300 hospitals now use iKEY’s keyboards, which retail for $200 to $300. Though they aren’t flat-screened, they are sealed and stand up to disinfectant sprays and wipes, Driskill said.

Keyboard cleanliness is a hot-button issue right now, he said. As health care professionals do away with paper charts, keyboards are moving closer to patients, Driskill said. Accreditation teams are focusing on ways to reduce cross-contamination.

Schools, libraries and other government agencies have also expressed interest.

“My wife’s a librarian in a public school,” Noland said. “She wants them.”