Pathogen Surrogate Tracking for Accurate Sanitation Testing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing sanitation methods struggle to ensure thorough cleaning of surfaces and equipment, especially when high-temperature washing is not feasible, leading to potential false negatives and incomplete sanitation processes due to uneven application and testing of pathogen surrogates.
Innovation Solution
A sanitation management system that records pathogen surrogate application locations, uses non-coding DNA sequences as tags, and employs augmented reality to ensure comprehensive inspection and tracking of pathogen surrogate presence post-sanitation, providing a binary indication of sanitation efficacy through varying resilience levels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If pathogen surrogates are applied to surfaces prior to sanitation process, then sanitation efficacy can be tested, but false negatives occur when surrogates are not applied to all surface areas
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the sanitation monitoring process into distinct segments: (1) application of pathogen surrogates to specific target locations on surfaces, (2) sanitation treatment of the entire surface, and (3) post-sanitation testing at the same target locations. This segmentation ensures that surrogates are strategically placed at representative locations and that testing focuses on those same locations, preventing false negatives while maintaining testing efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary action by applying pathogen surrogates to target locations on surfaces before the sanitation process occurs. This advance placement ensures that the surrogates are present at critical locations prior to cleaning, allowing the subsequent sanitation process and testing to accurately assess whether those specific areas were properly sanitized, thereby eliminating false negatives.
2Reliability
If high temperature washing is used to sanitize equipment, then pathogen elimination is effective, but the method is not feasible for large equipment, walls, floors, and other surfaces
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces pathogen surrogates as intermediaries to bridge the gap between sanitation application and efficacy verification. These surrogates are applied to surfaces regardless of the sanitation method used, and their post-sanitation presence or absence provides reliable indication of pathogen elimination efficacy. This intermediary approach allows verification of sanitation effectiveness across diverse surfaces (equipment, walls, floors) without requiring high-temperature washing for all applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter being measured from direct pathogen detection to pathogen surrogate detection. By using surrogates that can be reliably detected after sanitation, the system enables efficacy assessment across various surfaces and sanitation methods, including those where high-temperature washing is not feasible. This parameter change allows versatile application while maintaining reliable efficacy measurement.
3Productivity
If sanitation monitoring is performed without tracking application locations, then inspection efficiency is reduced, but comprehensive coverage of all surfaces cannot be ensured
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by tracking and recording the specific locations where pathogen surrogates were applied before sanitation. This location information is then used to guide post-sanitation testing, ensuring that inspectors test the exact same areas where surrogates were placed. This feedback loop between application recording and testing guidance ensures comprehensive coverage of critical surfaces while maintaining high inspection efficiency, as testers don't need to randomly search for surrogate locations.
Data Source
AI summary
A sanitation management system maintains records of exemplary locations on an item to be sanitized and indicates those locations to a person or system charged with applying a pathogen surrogate prior to a sanitation process. The sanitation management system maintains records of where the pathogen surrogate was applied prior to the sanitation process. Following the sanitation process, the sanitation management system indicates to an inspector, or an inspection system, locations of where the pathogen surrogate was applied for the purpose of facilitating testing of the sanitation process by checking for the presence of the pathogen surrogate at some or all of those locations. This can ensure that the inspection process is relevant to the sanitation process and less likely to generate false negatives where the inspection finds a lack of the pathogen surrogate not due to cleaning, but due to lack of application of the pathogen surrogate.