UV Disinfection Control System

Objective: Control a medical device from the palm of a hand

A Michigan medical device manufacturer built ultraviolet disinfection units: rolling towers that clean a hospital room with UV light after a patient leaves. Staff could not stay in the room while a unit ran, so the units needed a reliable remote control, and the hospital needed a record of every room treated.

The manufacturer asked Web Ascender to build both: the software on a rugged handheld that runs the units, and the web system that tracks treatments across facilities.

What Web Ascender Did

• Handheld control app - a Windows Mobile application on rugged handhelds that starts, pauses, resumes, and stops treatments, shows time remaining, and confirms each step with the unit
• Device communication - the command protocol between handheld and unit, with retries, confirmations, and recovery when a job is resumed after an interruption
• One handheld, several units - linked operation so a single handheld runs multiple units in a large room at the same time
• Barcode scanning - staff scan the room before a treatment, so every job is tied to the right location
• Built for hospital networks - WiFi provisioning (WEP, WPA, WPA2), automatic switching between WiFi and 3G, and our own diagnostic tools for tracking down connection problems in buildings full of interference
• A new generation of hardware - migrated the app to a newer rugged handheld, with cellular data compression and background sync
• Treatment tracking - a web application that receives every treatment from the handhelds, with facilities, rooms, devices, reports, and setup guides for staff
• Over-the-air updates - new versions delivered to handhelds in the field, with automatic local database upgrades
• Spanish translation of the handheld app
• In the field - on-site testing and debugging with the manufacturer’s engineers and in working hospitals, and support for the device’s ETL/UL safety certification

The Outcome

The handheld became the way hospital staff ran the manufacturer’s disinfection units: scan the room, start the treatment from outside the door, and let the system record it. The project shows the kind of work we still do today - software that talks to real hardware, works when the network doesn’t, and holds up in a regulated environment.