by Brianna Crandall — February 4, 2015—The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) just issued a recommendation for the use of sealed television (TV) remote controls for hotel-guest and healthcare-patient rooms to enable better cleaning of these high-touch points in order to prevent devices from harboring and spreading infectious organisms.
“Items frequently touched by guests or patients should be regularly cleaned and disinfected or replaced by guest room attendants or environmental service professionals, and traditional remote controls are notoriously hard to clean and sanitize,” said Allen Rathey, president of The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI). “A simple solution is the newer sealed remote now widely available and used in hotel chains to include Best Western International (Ref: Clean Remote external link) as well as in the facilities of major healthcare providers.”
The sealed, smooth, liquid-impervious “touch membrane” can be sprayed and left wet with a disinfectant to enable complete cleaning and disinfection not possible with traditional porous remote surfaces and devices damaged by moisture, says HFI.
The less-porous design of the sealed touch / flat surface also harbors fewer bacteria even before being cleaned, according to a University of Arizona Study conducted by Sheri Maxwell, BS, and Charles P. Gerba, PhD, cited by HFI.
According to the leading provider of these products, proven technology is available that works with more than 200 brands of TVs.
The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) Educational Center and Web site strives to provide authoritative information for creating and maintaining clean, healthy indoor environments. HFI addresses the many interrelated aspects of the built environment ecosystem—such as air, water, energy, materials and resources, green cleaning, indoor environmental quality, waste management, people and more—as an integrated or holistic system. HFI also emphasizes prevention and removal of pollutants or contaminants to help ensure optimum conditions for living, learning and working.
