HAMC welcomes Sunny the Sanitizing Robot

Sue Sitter/PCT Chelsea Wyatt stands in the operating room at Heart of America Medical Center with Sunny the Sanitizing Robot.

Heart of America Medical Center's infection control team has a new member with a cheerful name.

Sunny the Sanitizing Robot has started working in the hospital's emergency and operating rooms to eliminate nearly 100% of bacteria, viruses and other biohazards, using ultraviolet light technology.

"We do our normal cleaning in the operating room and the ER and then, we bring in the robot as another level of disinfection," said Chelsey Wyatt, director of the surgical department at HAMC.

Wyatt said Sunny began its work after a complicated setup process supported by engineers and clinical analysts from Blue Ocean Robotics.

The process included mapping the operating and emergency rooms, where the robot would need to target germs the most.

"In the new facility, that will be expanded to map the entire facility," Wyatt said, referring to the new hospital site slated to open in 2024.

Wyatt said Sunny has the capability to be guided manually into areas that are not mapped by using a tablet computer. That flexibility would allow it to sanitize rooms where patients with highly contagious diseases had been.

Because the robot uses UV light to sanitize surfaces, it poses a hazard to humans while it cleans. Wyatt said its safety features prevent people from being exposed to UV radiation.

"Nobody can actually be in the room with the robot while it's working, so the doors are blocked when it's actually working," Wyatt said. "But when the lights are off, it's completely safe to be around," she said."

"While it's running, it has a voice that tells you to stay back and do not enter," she added. "It also has heat sensors and senses both body heat and motion, so if you get too close to it, it will automatically shut itself off. The tablet that controls it is propped up against the doorway, so if anything bumps the tablet or there's any motion at all detected by the tablet, it shuts itself down. It won't restart until you either manually restart it, or it senses that there's no longer movement in the area."

The cost of the robot and launching it, plus support, maintenance and a three-year care package amounted to a little less than $100,000, according to Wyatt. "It was all covered by a grant," she said.

The grant was offered to help hospitals address infection prevention.

"Obviously, we have an older structure down here and there will be some improvement in the new building," she noted, standing in an operating room located in a part of the building dating to the late 1940s.

"But, for what we could do here, we found a couple of things," she said. "One, a scope-drying cabinet, and two, UV-C technology were the two things that we were able to implement because of this grant money, that had to be used specifically for infection prevention."

"So, this was the last piece to our infection prevention down here to offer the highest level of patient safety that we can within the confines of our current facility," she said.

Wyatt said HAMC was the first smaller hospital to use the UV cleaning technology created by Blue Ocean Robotics.

"We’re working on some quality improvement and case reports. It's kind of a joint venture to see how we can best maximize this technology in our setting," she said.

Wyatt said most often, "they use this technology in dental offices and some schools, as well as some big academic medical centers such as Stanford University."

She noted the company was collecting data on HAMC's experience using Sunny to improve the way the disinfection robot technology fits the needs of smaller medical facilities.

"We’re also doing a joint venture with (Blue Ocean Robotics) to complete a case report where we’re going to swab our high-touch surfaces, submit those to our lab here, which will grow them out on plates," she added. "Then, we’ll monitor the growth before cleaning, after our usual cleaning, then after cleaning and use of UV-C technology to see that we’re 100% effective on those high-touch surfaces in eliminating any growth at all."

"So far, our early signs point to yes," she said. "We had very minimal growth after our usual cleaning, but we had zero growth, none at all after using the robot."

Although Wyatt is the only hospital staffer trained to use Sunny, she said she hoped in the future to train someone in the facility's environmental services department to use the technology in the new hospital building.

Wyatt said Sunny got its name after she decided to involve the community in the robot's rollout with a contest. Good Samaritan Hospital Association Marketing Director Tony Coffman helped Wyatt to collect a list of name suggestions from employees, patients and area residents that included Mr. Clean, Zappy Germore and Rosie, a nod to the popular Jetsons cartoon.

Rugby teacher Ashley Seykora won the contest with her entry, "Sunny." Seykora won two tickets to the hospital's Greatest Needs Gala as a prize.

Wyatt said the contest judges had input from clinical analysts and engineers from Blue Ocean Robotics. She said their team chose Sunny for the name's reference to Ultraviolet light, which also comes from the sun.

"We had so many fun names to choose from, it was hard to pick," Wyatt said.

Sunny usually stays docked for use in the emergency or operating rooms, but people notice when it ventures outside those confines.

"Once in a while, you’ll see me traveling the halls with Sunny," Wyatt said. "We met quite a few fans on our way to the conference room today, and just making our way between the OR and ER from time to time, I get a lot of questions from people in the building."

"And then in the new facility, you’ll be seeing Sunny a whole lot more," she said.