Rosie the robot doesn’t clean germs, she kills them.
Penn Highlands hospital in Huntingdon calls their ultraviolate light or “UV” germ-zapping robot “Rosie”.
“We thought that she looked a lot like Rosie the robot on the TV cartoon “The Jetsons”,” Shelly Brown, Infection Control Coordinator, for Penn Highlands Huntingdon, said.
Shelly Brown, Infection Control Coordinator for Penn Highlands Huntingdon, says having Rosie as apart of their sanization routine adds another layer of protection.
“Our “EVS” staff is fantastic, they do our rooms and do a great job, but they can’t reach every nook and cranny, any place the light can get, it will kill bacteria and viruses,” Shelly Brown, Infection Control Coordinator for Penn Highlands Huntingdon, said.
Jason McClure, who operates Rosie, says before the pandemic Rosie ran in operating rooms or patient rooms, isolation rooms, without anyone present.
But now, she’s going into rooms where COVID patients have been.
“What Rosie does is she’ll raise this boom, and the ultraviolet light will come on, and we do that about five to ten minutes, depending on where we’re at,” Jason McClure, Mechanical Electrical Service Leader for Penn Highlands Huntingdon, said.
Not only does the one hundred thousand-dollar robot kill viruses and bacteria with her light, her carbon filter, filters the air.
Brown says this robot is different than others you’ll see at grocery stores.
“Some of the robots that we see out and about in the community are just cleaning spills on the floor, but they aren’t necessarily killing any bacteria or viruses, they’re just cleaning up a mess or notifying the management that there is a spill,” Brown, said.
Rosie went from 300 uses a month at Penn Highlands Huntingdon before the pandemic, to 400 since the pandemic hit in Mid March.