In my many years of clinical hygiene one area of ongoing concern for me is cross-contamination in the hygiene room.  We make extraordinary efforts to protect ourselves and our patients.  However, both can be unintentionally exposed while completing exams on our own .

There is a lot of discussion around the threat posed by aerosols, but there are other “red areas” around the operatory that should not be overlooked.

We all know the computer isn’t “clean”. How unclean it really is, is probably not common knowledge. A recent study from Emerging Infectious Disease Journal showed that the computer keyboard and the mouse were significantly more contaminated, with Covid-19 than the door knobs or even trash can!

With Bola AI, I don’t have to touch the keyboard or the mouse when the patient is in the chair.

It is an important tool to support a gloves-on, hands-off approach to patient care.

In other words if my gloves are on, my hands are on the patient and off of all other surfaces. Prior to having Bola, I would discard many gloves during a single appointment to interrupt that well known pathway for infectious material. That is no longer necessary. Bola is a voice technology that can virtually eliminate cross contamination between the patient and the computer.

In the coming weeks we will all learn new infection control protocols addressing the COVID-19 virus. With some pre-planning we can effectively address this well known gap in infection control.