Pressrelease: MedicalKey™ sanitizable hospital keyboards

Product Overview MedicalKey Keyboards

The topic is everywhere: Nosocomial MRSA infection. What is meant are hospital-acquired infections due to the exposition to equipment and processes for medical treatment. The European commission estimates 4.1 million patients to become infected during hospitalization in the EU every year, which relates to one in 20 hospital admissions, considering 81 million hospital admissions per year (data source: ECDC Epidemiological Report on Communicable Diseases in Europe 2008). The EU further assumes, that 8-12% of all patients acquire diseases and affections during their stay in hospital. As such, about half of all health damages during hospitalization result of infections during medical treatment, all in all more than 4.5 million hospital-acquired infections in the EU per year. According to an article of German news magazine “Focus”, the German Society for Hospital Care rates the yearly death toll at about 40.000 cases. Having said this, the amount of fatalities due to hospital-acquired infections exceeds the one caused by influenza or aids in Germany.

In January of 2009, the Council of the European Commission has released the proposal for a recommendation “on patient safety, including the prevention and control of healthcare associated infections”, which refers to results of the Epidemiological Report of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). For Germany, the quoted report refers to the “Recommendation of the Commission for Hospital Hygiene and Infection Prevention” at the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI). The recommendation of the RKI describes requirements to hygiene with cleaning and disinfection of surfaces as follows: “Medical-technical devices and fixtures shall have as flat surfaces as possible, and particularly at the contact areas, be easy to clean and disinfect.”

But how shall a keyboard, which is the main contact area for the use of a computer for doctors, nursing staff and more and more also patients and visitors, have a plain surface, as it is the mechanical travel of each key, which makes all the difference to the required ease of typing? Reality shows, that only significant key travel leads to acceptable results when it comes to typing comfort. The more and bigger gaps and hollow, hardly accessible spaces there are, the more difficult it gets to effectively clean and disinfect them.

Loopholes are quite often sought in the extremes: Waterproof keyboards with completely flat surface provide no or only little ease of typing, due to minimum or even complete lack of key travel. Water protected full travel keyboards on the contrary, hardly differ from regular PC keyboards in terms of appearance and use, and therefore usually offer acceptable typing comfort. Waterproof full travel keyboards do have a critical disadvantage, though: As much as the cleaning and disinfection fluid pours into the keyboard, as difficult it is to get it out, dirt and germs included. It can stay there as residue for a long period of time. If one washes waterproof full travel keyboards, the following problems may arise to personnel safety due to bacteria proliferation:

1) Especially with maximum germ growth in the hollow spaces under the keycaps, polluted cleaning fluid can re-contaminate keyboard and key surfaces, if bacteria has not been completely extincted with the sanitizing process.
2) Depending on the design, the keyboard can drip or leak on for for a long period of time, which also bears the risk of new or extended contamination of keyboard and ambience by polluted cleaning fluid.
3) Even an acceleration of bacteria growth is thinkable, if the trapped and polluted cleaning fluid forms a nutrient solution in the hollow areas of the keyboard.

Looking at the infection risk, one could draw the conclusion it would be better to not wash waterproof full travel keyboards, as pollution and bacteria would stay mainly untouched inside the keyboard, rather than risking to be flushed out to the surface, conveyed by the cleaning agent, or accumulate in hardly accessible spaces under the key field. In this case however, it would have been sufficient to deploy a simple PC keyboard without water protection. Problems with the practical implementation of the washing process in running healthcare operations shall not be addressed here.

But what is the solution? Medical keyboards with a silicon membrane over the key field offer typing comfort and are easy to clean and disinfect at the same time. Silicon membrane keyboards have an ergonomical key travel of approximately 2,5 mm, comparable with the travel of modern note books. Flat keys and the integrated, waterproof sealing of the key field allow for most efficient cleaning and disinfection (“sanitization”) by spraying and/or wiping. The cleaning fluid cannot penetrate into the keyboard, and thus prevents from re-contamination and continued leaking or dripping. Forming of a nutrient solution is also not feasible, as silicon membrane and plastic surfaces dry off fast after cleaning.

Active Key is a leading supplier of silicon membrane keyboards. MedicalKey™ hospital keyboards from Active Key combine the distinguished cleaning characteristics of silicon key membrans with the advantages of illuminated key symbols to a real “highlight”. Having said this, the keyboards are evenly suited for operation during daytime, as well as operation at night and in darkened or scarcely illuminated rooms in a hospital.
Product Overview MedicalKey Keyboards