One of the deadliest, but least talked about issues in America are healthcare-acquired infections. For reference, 373 people died in mass shootings in the US in 2018. About 14,000 people died from all combined forms of gun violence in what was considered to be one of the deadliest years to date. Diabetes, which was the 7th leading cause of death in the US in 2015, caused just under 80,000 deaths that year. And yet 99,000 people die annually from hospital-acquired infections (HAIs.) So how come nobody’s talking about it?

The irony of this alone should warrant more public interest. These are sick people who go to the hospital for treatment and then die from an even greater sickness as a result of the treatment. This is worse than Samsung selling phones that exploded in people’s faces. It’s an epic catastrophe that should be at the forefront of people’s minds.

About one third of these infections are urinary tract infections. About one fifth are surgical site infections. Fifteen percent are pneumonia. An alarming part of this is that there is no clear cause of these infections that can be easily changed. It’s not as simple as just coming up with a single new regulation. If it were, then hospitals would be on top of it, as they typically are prettygood about meeting the latest standards for infection prevention. But unfortunately, there are various roots to this most difficult problem. And they have to be addressed individually.

So, where do we go from here? Do we seek alternate forms of treatment? Do we just ignore death statistics like we do as we get on a plane? Fortunately, this is a really important issue to a lot of very intelligent people and there are some who have already begun to come up with solutions.

It’s actually hypothesized that mobile devices may have a bigger role in these deaths than initially realized. It’s no question that mobile devices have completely changed healthcare- in many ways for the better. Anybody who’s ever had to do medical paperwork is extremely grateful for their implementation. There are entire forests that are happy not to be made into paper for hospitals. But if we’re going to depend so greatly on mobile devices, we have to ask ourselves: how often do they getting cleaned?

This is hugely important because in the last few years mobile devices have become extensions of our hands. With the CDC estimating that 80% of infections are transmitted through hands this has become a major factor in public health. You can wash your hands as many times as you want, but if you are going to touch the same dirty phone immediately after, it doesn’t do much good. If you are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that every inch of a hospital is properly disinfected in order to prevent the spread of infections, how could you miss such an obvious hole?

It turns out it’s not that simple. Apple advises against using "window cleaners, household cleaners, compressed air, aerosol sprays, solvents, ammonia, abrasives, or cleaners containing hydrogen peroxide to clean an iPad." Using such cleaning products typically damage the screens and can make them very foggy. Microsoft and Samsung don’t offer much better options. Obviously, nobody wants to damage tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of investment, but these infections end up costing a whole lot more.

Seal ShieldTM has invented a groundbreaking product that tackles this problem in a way that has never been done before. They’ve launched a unique device called the ElectroClave, a disinfection solution unlike any other. It utilizes LED technology that allows for 360 degrees of disinfection on mobile devices. Thanks to filtration media, there will not be a single spot on your phone or tablet that isn’t thoroughly decontaminated.

Now it’s one thing to get a solution. A problem that hospitals run into when they try to adopt a similar solution is making sure it actually gets used. Again with the irony, it is incredibly painful to spend thousands on disinfection solutions only to realize that they are being ignored. So what does the ElectroClave do? Keep people accountable. This thing uses breakthrough software and knows exactly who is disinfecting their phones and when. It keeps a log of everyone’s usage and can even send reminders when your phone is due for a disinfection cycle. Imagine if your washing machine could text your kids to get out of their stinky, ketchup-stained clothes and wash their stuff. And add thousands of lives saved to the equation. That’s the ElecroClave, ladies and gentlemen.