Ultrasonic Compartmentation and Tightness Detection of Negatively Pressurized Hospital Isolation Wards

Coltraco Ultrasonics正在开发一种新的创新解决方案，以确保在医院病房中有足够的空间来治疗空气传播疾病。我们在海事和消防领域应用超声波技术30多年，积累了丰富的经验，深受启发，现在我们将屡获殊荣的超声波发生器和接收器应用于医院病房隔室气密性检查。超声波是一种频率高于人类听觉范围的声音。它经常用于医疗诊断，在患者和医务人员周围使用是安全的。用于治疗空气传播疾病（如COVID-19）的病房必须能够容纳病原体，使其不会污染附近的病房和设施。这是通过房间的负压来确保的，由此空气被泵出房间到安全的位置。只有当房间具有足够的气密性时，才有可能做到这一点，而气密性可以通过超声波技术进行量化。本项目旨在开发所需的技术，以快速轻松地确定房间是否适合以这种方式进行负压。这种技术将依赖于超声波的物理特性，特别是，当超声波入射到流体到固体界面时，超声波会受到明显的阻碍，并且超声波在空气中的波形会受到其传播所通过的孔径的量化影响。当入射到潜在泄漏部位时，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。尽管如此，我们的研究迄今为止表明，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，利用广泛的科学数据，通过超声波扫描潜在的泄漏部位，自动确定房间是否适合负压。通过“影响扩展”资金，我们希望将我们的解决方案扩展到医院病房的分区测试之外。负压设备也用于医疗保健的其他领域，如洁净室、无菌混合设施、医疗咨询室和牙科诊所。在专业制药的洁净室和无菌配制设施中，重要性不仅在于遏制空气传播的COVID-19病原体的传播，还在于确保无菌环境以防止污染。目前的牙科实践需要很长的“休耕时间”，以允许空气传播的病原体在清洁治疗室之前沉降，这也将受益于知道他们的治疗室足够密封，以允许安装负压设备。这将减少所需的“休息时间”，允许在同一房间进行更频繁的治疗。保持室内负压需要经常检查室内气密性，以检查泄漏部位区域，我们的解决方案将为这些新市场提供一种非侵入性、经济高效、高效准确的方法，用于定位和量化泄漏部位，以保持气密性，同时确保最小的中断并最大限度地节省成本。该设备设计为手持式，符合人体工程学和直观的，可以很容易地由任何医院或医务人员，以及由服务团队等操作。

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.