Hospitals are often deadly. To people. Who catch an infection in their weakened state. Which goes on to kill them.
A death-ray robot may do a lot to save those people's lives.
He looks a lot like R2D2, but his name is Frost and he's on a mission to kill superbugs at Stanford Hospital. The robot made by Xenex, emits pulsating ultra violet light that stops the DNA of microorganisms from replicating, effectively killing them. The special light can wipe out potentially deadly microorganisms such as C-DIFF and MRSA that often lurk in hospitals.
There are actually two of them in use at Stanford hospital, and for what seems like a pretty damned inexpensive $82,000 per robot. They seem to be working.
Stanford's tests indicate the robots are completing their mission. "We measured the bacterial loads in the operating rooms after the robot had been in more than 10 minutes and we could not find any bacteria, so they have proven to be very effective in the ORs," said Brad Igler, housekeeping department director at Stanford Hospital.
At the end of this video, it says that other hospitals who have used this technology have cut their infection rates by half.
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Unlike certain Martians, these invaders aren't suseptible to earthly microorganisms; rather, they exterminate them. If their benefit proves out as it seems to be, let's hope they take over our planet, hospital by hospital.