SACRAMENTO, CA (KTXL/CNN) - New technology at a California medical center is helping to prevent the spread of illnesses inside hospital rooms.
Sutter Roseville Medical Center's unveiled its new germ zapping machine to students from Oakmont High School in Sacramento who had been waiting weeks to see the robot.
Allison Gontheir heads infection control at the hospital.
She said the staff was so excited about the new technology which uses ultraviolet light to disinfect hospital surfaces after staff clean them manually.
"We thought, 'Wow, we really need to share this and let everyone know what we`re doing and expand that into the educational groups,' " Gontheir said.
This was the perfect opportunity for the students to learn about the threat of contracting an infection from hospital facilities, she said.
Lance Berg, a student at the school, said he was surprised to learn how commonly patients get serious illnesses from hospital rooms that aren`t properly sanitized.
“I figured it would be something where one out of every 200 patients would get it but we saw some had upwards of 50 percent."
Monday, the students presented their last two weeks of research on hospital-borne infectious diseases, and got their first look at the robot in action.
"I'm the type of person, every time I get sick, I look up my symptoms, so it was kind of cool to learn about a new disease and tie that into the robot," said Matthew Parachou, another student.
Parachou even gave the robot a nickname, “Melman,” after the character from Madagascar.
"In the movie the giraffe is a germaphobe, and that`s what we`re trying to do here is promote this germ zapping robot," he said.
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