The Albany Gazette - Canadian Hospitals Prepare to Test the Final Step in Engineered Infection Prevention: Real-Time Disinfection of the Air

SIMCOE, ON / ACCESS Newswire / October 28, 2026 / The Coalition for Community & Healthcare Acquired Infection Reduction (CHAIR) today announced a national pilot program to test whether continuous, real-time disinfection of hospital air can measurably reduce airborne pathogens, surface contamination and the spread of respiratory viral illness in Canadian hospitals.

The program will evaluate SaniLume, a Canadian-made, Health Canada-registered, fan-assisted upper-air ultraviolet (UV) device manufactured by Ottawa-based Illumisoft, in facility-wide installations. CHAIR has signed letters of intent with Shared Health and Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre, and with the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) in British Columbia.

The final step in engineered infection prevention

For more than a decade, Canadian hospitals have been adopting engineered infection prevention (EIP): controls built into the environment so that protection does not depend solely on human behaviour. Each step has taken on a different route of transmission:

• Automated UV room disinfection gave hospitals a reliable, no-touch way to disinfect bathrooms after every use and procedure rooms between occupants.
• Self-disinfecting sinks addressed the hand hygiene sink as a reservoir of drug-resistant organisms such as Candida auris and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales.
• Self-disinfecting surfaces, such as antimicrobial copper, reduced contamination on bed rails, overbed tables, door handles and other high-touch points.

Each of these measures protects patients between exposures. However, none of them treats the air patients and staff breathe while care is underway. Respiratory viruses such as influenza, COVID-19 and RSV spread through shared indoor air, often from people who do not yet know they are infected. According to weekly reporting by Public Health agency of Canada, up to 40% of hospital patients with COVID or Flu acquire their disease while in hospital.

"We have engineered our way to cleaner rooms, cleaner sinks and cleaner surfaces," said Barry Hunt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of CHAIR. "The air is the last and most important piece. Real-time disinfection of the air, continuously, while patients and staff are in the room, is the step that ties the whole system together. That is what this program is designed to prove."

The laboratory evidence

In testing at the University of Leeds aerobiology chamber, reported by Dr. Louise Fletcher of the School of Civil Engineering in August 2022, SaniLume reduced airborne concentrations of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the virus surrogate Phi-6 bacteriophage by 97% to 98% at its lowest aperture setting and by 99.1% to 99.7% at its maximum setting. Organisms were released continuously into a patient-sized room ventilated at 6 air changes per hour while the device ran, so the results reflect real-time protection while the source of contamination is still present.

The Leeds report described SaniLume as the best-performing upper-room UV device tested in its chamber to date. SaniLume delivered between 216 and 1,994 equivalent air changes per hour, depending on organism and setting. The best single upper-room device previously tested at Leeds was estimated at about 8 to 12.

"SaniLume is roughly 15 to 30 times the air disinfection of the best upper-room devices previously tested at Leeds, and about 300 times that of typical ceiling-mounted units," said Hunt. "That is why we are excited to put it to the test in real hospitals. We intend to initiate these studies in November, subject to funding."

"Our goal is to give hospitals a practical way to continuously disinfect the air while patients and staff remain in the room," said Ehsan Agahi, CEO of Illumisoft. "We have worked closely with CHAIR in developing this program. The proposed research is intended to help hospitals assess SaniLume's performance in clinical settings, understand its operational value and make informed decisions about potential broader adoption."

Why this matters

Roughly one in ten hospital inpatients acquires an infection during their stay. A patient who would have stayed one week may stay two or three. As a result, as many as one in five hospital beds can be occupied by someone who was infected in hospital. Those blocked beds back up emergency departments and delay care for everyone else.

"Allowing 10% of our patients to get infected is unsustainable," said Hunt. "The cost is simply too high. Billions of dollars are spent on treatment, and many billions more are lost to the inefficiency of blocked beds."

Each new hospital bed costs about $1 million to build - and another $500K to $1 million annually to staff and operate. Protecting a bed with upper-air UV costs about $5,000 initially and a few hundred dollars a year to maintain and operate.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 Canadian hospital beds are blocked on any given day, and CHAIR believes universal airborne protection could cut that number in half. The pilot is designed to test that hypothesis with measured data.

13 studies, one coordinated program

The pilot project combines facility-wide installations with 13 linked studies starting with two studies in partnership with the University of Waterloo:

• A large bioaerosol chamber study comparing 6 air changes per hour against 3 air changes per hour plus upper-air UV, each challenged with real-time exposure to influenza and coronavirus. HVAC is the single largest energy consumer in healthcare - and it could potentially be cut in half while significantly increasing airborne protection with UV.
• A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study modelling how air moves through patient rooms, waiting rooms and clinical spaces while being treated with upper-air UV to inform the healthcare design community and future CSA standards.

Other studies will cover real-time airborne monitoring of particles, bacteria, and viruses in clinical spaces, surface contamination, infection outcomes, staff and operational impacts, and health economics.

What the program will measure

CHAIR's targets for the program are:

• More than 90% reduction of airborne pathogens, measured in real time in clinical spaces;
• More than 50% reduction in surface contamination; and
• More than 30% reduction in onward transmission of respiratory viral illness, including influenza, COVID-19 and RSV.

Airborne measurements are the primary outcome. Infection, operational and economic outcomes will be analyzed against baseline conditions and will inform provincial capital planning and future CSA national standards.

Built on a decade of standards and partnership

CHAIR was founded in 2014 by Barry Hunt and Richard Dixon to advance engineered solutions to healthcare- and community-acquired infection. Its members, a coalition of scientists, physicians, engineers and infection prevention professionals, have been active volunteer contributors to Canada's national standards for healthcare facilities:

• CSA Z8000, Canadian health care facilities. The first edition in 2011 required single-patient rooms in new hospitals and specified hand hygiene sinks designed to reduce splash and aerosolization. The 2024 edition requires sinks engineered to prevent biofilm and the release of pathogenic bioaerosols. It also directs planners to consider new and emerging infection prevention technologies, and it includes a dedicated annex on UV disinfection covering device types, commissioning, maintenance, safety and training.
• CSA's 2015 guidance on evaluating emerging infection prevention technologies, which set out how hospitals can assess innovations like UV and self-disinfecting surfaces.
• CSA Z317.12, Cleaning and disinfection of health care facilities, and CSA Z94.4, Selection, use and care of respirators, where CHAIR continues to contribute to the current revisions.

CHAIR has also worked with provincial ministries of health and health authorities to bring engineered controls from the standards page into hospitals.

"Ontario, British Columbia and Manitoba have been leaders in the adoption of engineered infection prevention in Canada," said Hunt. "Their willingness to look at the evidence and act on it has helped make Canada a world leader in hospital design. We thank them, and we thank our partners at Shared Health, Health Sciences Centre and PHSA for helping take the next step."

About CHAIR

The Coalition for Community & Healthcare Acquired Infection Reduction (CHAIR) is a Canadian not-for-profit coalition of scientists, physicians, engineers and other stakeholders. Its mission is to inspire and guide engineered solutions to infection, with a vision of safe spaces, free from pathogens. CHAIR's work spans upper-air UV, automated UV room disinfection, sinks, ventilation and filtration, antimicrobial surfaces, occupational respiratory protection and CSA standards development.

Media contact: Barry Hunt | [email protected] | (519) 749-5267 | www.chaircoalition.org

SOURCE: Coalition for Community & Healthcare Acquired Infection Reduction

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

(A.Johnson--TAG)