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AXREM Collaboration to raise awareness of the decontamination of Ultrasound equipment

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During an AXREM Ultrasound Special Focus Group meeting a year ago members discussed issues surrounding the decontamination of equipment they provide to hospitals. With several different guidance’s available to professionals, often in long documents containing many pages of guidelines members decided an easy to read summary pulling out the main points could be more effective.

From this first discussion AXREM enlisted the help of the British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) and the Society & College of Radiographers (SCoR) and set up a small working group and the collaborative work begun.

This best practice summary has been developed from the national and international guidelines and articles published over the last 5 years. It is intended to provide users of ultrasound with the information and general principles required to promote, ensure and evidence effective and safe decontamination of ultrasound machines and transducers.

This summary is primarily related to transducer and ultrasound machine decontamination. Whilst this is important, it is not the only consideration in the overall protection of patients from infection. Consideration should also be given to all equipment and consumables, but this sits outside the remit of this summary.

To accompany this guidance, we have also produced a poster which can be displayed in Ultrasound departments across the country and will help remind professionals to carry out important decontamination processes.

Sally Edgington AXREM Director said “This project has seen a number of professionals across all 3 organisations working together to ensure this subject is highlighted to professionals, with the current Covid-19 crisis never before has decontamination been more important. Our launch event was postponed but we felt it was important to get this information into the public domain”.

Both the documents can be downloaded from our resource library page of the AXREM website. https://www.axrem.org.uk/resource/

Notes:

AXREM is the UK trade association representing the interests of suppliers of diagnostic medical imaging, radiotherapy, healthcare IT and care equipment in the UK. Our group is comprised of most of the industry supply companies.

AXREM members supply most of the diagnostic medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment installed in UK hospitals. In doing so, our member companies and their employees work side by side with Radiologists, Radiographers and Practitioners, Oncologists and a wide range of healthcare professionals in delivering healthcare to patients using our technologies. Our members therefore have unique knowledge, experience and insight into the workflow and challenges faced by healthcare professionals on a day-to-day basis, which enables us to develop and offer innovative solutions to improve the speed and quality of diagnostic procedures and treatments with our ultimate aim of improving patient care.

Contact:

Sally Edgington, AXREM Director  sally.edgington@axrem.org.uk