Ultrasonic Compartmentation and Tightness Detection of Negatively Pressurized Hospital Isolation Wards

科尔特罗超声波公司正在开发一种新的创新解决方案，以确保医院病房内有足够的隔间，用于治疗空气传播疾病。受三十多年来应用超声波技术改善海事和消防部门安全的经验启发，我们现在正在改装我们屡获殊荣的超声波发生器和接收器，用于医院病房隔间密封性检查。超声波是频率高于人类听觉范围的声音。它经常用于医疗诊断，在病人和医务人员身边使用是安全的。用于治疗新冠肺炎等空气传播疾病的病房必须能够含有病原体，使其不会污染附近的病房和设施。这是通过对房间进行负压来确保的，空气从房间被泵出到一个安全的位置。只有当房间有足够的气密性时，这才是可能的，这一特性可以用超声波技术来量化。这个项目旨在开发所需的技术，以这种方式快速、轻松地识别房间是否适合负压。这种技术将依赖于超声波的物理性质，具体地说，当超声入射到流体-固体界面时，超声波被显著阻碍，并且超声波在空气中的波形受到其传播通过的孔的定量影响。当入射到潜在泄漏位置时，超声波的行为取决于许多参数，因此，量化气密性是复杂的，但可以实现。然而，到目前为止，我们的研究表明，这种可量化的关系确实存在。在这个项目中，我们希望开发一种设备，利用大量的科学数据，通过超声扫描潜在的泄漏部位来自动确定房间是否适合负压。随着“扩大影响”的资助，我们希望将我们的解决方案扩展到医院病房的隔间测试之外。负压设备还用于医疗保健中的其他领域，如洁净室、无菌混合物设施、医疗诊疗室和牙医实践。在专业药品的无尘室和无菌复合设施中，重要的不仅仅是遏制空气中新冠肺炎病原体的传播，而是确保无菌环境以防止污染。目前的牙科实践需要很长的“休眠时间”，以便在清理治疗室之前让空气传播的病原体沉淀下来，这也将受益于了解他们的治疗室已经足够密封，以便安装负压设备。这将减少所需的“休眠时间”，以便在同一个房间进行更频繁的治疗。要保持房间的负压，需要经常检查房间的气密性，以检查泄漏区域，我们的解决方案将为这些新市场提供一种非侵入性、成本效益高、高效和准确的方法来定位和量化泄漏位置，以保持气密性，同时确保最小的干扰和最大限度的成本节约。该设备设计为手持、符合人体工程学和直观，可以由任何医院或医务人员以及类似的服务团队轻松操作。

Coltraco Ultrasonics is developing a new and innovative solution to the problem of ensuring adequate compartmentation in hospital wards for the treatment of airborne diseases. Inspired by over 30 years of experience applying ultrasonic technologies to the betterment of safety in the maritime and fire sectors, we are now adapting our award-winning ultrasonic generators and receivers for the purpose of hospital ward compartmentation airtightness inspection.Ultrasound is sound of frequencies above the range of human hearing. It is used frequently in medical diagnostics and is safe to use around patients and medical personnel.It is essential that wards used for the treatment of airborne diseases such as COVID-19 are able to contain pathogens such that they do not contaminate nearby wards and facilities. This is ensured through the negative pressurisation of the room, whereby air is pumped out of the room to a safe location. This is only possible if the room has adequate airtightness, a property that can be quantified with ultrasonic technologies.This project aims to develop the required technology to identify quickly and easily the suitability of a room for negative pressurisation in this manner. Such a technology will rely upon the physical properties of ultrasound, specifically, that ultrasound is impeded significantly when incident on fluid to solid interfaces and that the waveform of ultrasound in air is affected quantifiably by the aperture through which it propagates.The behaviour of ultrasound when incident on a potential leak site is dependent on a number of parameters such that quantifying airtightness is complex but achievable. Nevertheless, our research has so far shown evidence that such a quantifiable relationship does exist. In this project, we hope to develop a device that uses extensive scientific data to automatically determine the suitability of a room for negative pressurisation by scanning potential leak sites ultrasonically.With the “extension for impact” funding, we hope to scale our solution beyond compartmentation testing in hospital wards. Negative pressurisation equipment is also used in other areas within healthcare such as clean rooms, aseptic compounding facilities, medical consultation rooms, and dental practices. In clean rooms and aseptic compounding facilities in specialist pharmaceuticals the importance goes beyond containing the spread of airborne COVID-19 pathogens, ensuring a sterile environment to prevent contamination. Current dental practices requiring a long “fallow time” to allow airborne pathogens to settle before cleaning the treatment room will also benefit from knowing their treatment rooms are sealed adequately enough to allow installation of negative pressurisation equipment. This will reduce the “fallow time” required allowing for more frequent treatments to be conducted in the same room. Maintaining a room’s negative pressure requires frequent inspection of the rooms airtightness to check for leak site areas, and our solution will offer these new markets a non-invasive, cost-effective, efficient and accurate method of locating and quantifying leak sites to maintain airtightness while ensuring minimal disruption and maximising cost savings.The device is designed to be handheld, ergonomic and intuitive and can be easily operated by any hospital or medical personnel, as well as by servicing teams alike.