Hacker News Reader

I'm imagining a completely modular hospital composed of detachable rooms and corridors made of fabric, such that each room can be torn down, hard boiled, and replaced after every patient/procedure/day. The same for corridors every week, entire wings every month. (For example).

Is this anything approaching a workable idea?

View on HN

Much better option is just to add high intensity UV lighting to sterilize the AIR and most surfaces. For deep cleaning there are plenty of more or less mechanical solutions that are next to impossible to evolve around.

I've read interesting research that suggests that subjecting surfaces to ultrasound discourages the development of biofilms. This also helps cleaning.

In some hospitals they have rolling columns of UV lights that they leave in rooms after chemically cleaning them to provide an extra cleansing effect and also reduce airborne transmission of disease.

Switching standard fixtures over to copper based alloys (which have antimicrobial properties[1]) might be a good place to start.

I'm not sure to what extent the physical plant (walls, floors, etc) is the primary source of transmission compared with the staff/patients/visitors. The stats on something as basic and fundamental as hand-washing are often quite shocking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com