HP is just selling snake oil.
'Repeatable sanitization' is a feature of PCs now
HP Inc has announced a trio of slightly-odd products intended for use in hospitals. The new HP EliteOne 800 G4 23.8 Healthcare Edition All-in-One PC and HP EliteBook 840 G5 Healthcare Edition Notebook are computers intended for use in the healthcare industry. The EliteBook will ship with software called "Easy Clean" that …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 08:13 GMT Teiwaz
or at the very least...
Snake oil? I think it's brilliant to be able to wipe down a laptop without shutting off. This should be standard tissue.
FTFY
'Facial' recognition?
- Dunno, sound unhygienic....
'Faecal' recognition - definitely unhygienic, but think of the medical diagnosis lab savings...
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 11:28 GMT picturethis
Well, that's because you didn't order the "wipe counter display" entitlement option. Each time the PC is put into "wipe down mode" it increments a counter. When the counter hits 10,000, the PC must be returned to an HP authorized dealer for a reset before it will be allowed to enter the mode again.
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 15:51 GMT MrReynolds2U
Re: It is called "password protected screen saver".
Or - and I realise this is a really out-there comment - HP could put a power switch on their keyboards/mice so you could disable the keyboard/mouse to clean.
Oh wait... this is what they're doing... but they're gonna charge the earth for it... and probably include Bluetooth, ... and some kind of Cloud linkup... and an iPhone app... and a warranty recharge after 10,000 wipes... and make it a virtual button.
Just lol
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 10:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Given a PC's insides are lovely and warm, The Register imagines they might be a decent place for biological nasties to breed."
Possibly, but they would need to metabolize something inside to do so. AFAIK, the stuff in a laptop is pretty hard to digest, except maybe trapped dust.
But the real killer is that it will be very, very dry in there, due to all the heat. Bacteria are pretty tough but they do need some moisture.
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 16:04 GMT x 7
there are medical grade sealed keyboards and mice available off the shelf, though they cost a fortune and aren't all that reliable: usually the USB components fail. It just needs someone to make something more reliable.
However a bigger issue are the actual PCs themselves, which inevitably act as vacuum cleaners and get full of shit off the wards. Hospitals really do need sealed-unit PCs which are fanless, washable and resilient. A lot of hospitals use thin clients anyway - there could be a case for putting an uprated Raspberry Pi into a waterproof plastic case and using that as a terminal for a remotely hosted VM
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 16:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Mistakes
IP rating is 'Ingress Protection' not 'International Protection'.
I do not know why there is a question mark after the sentence about it being DICOM part 14 compliant. This is quite sensible and lother people make such monitors.
The reason it says "not intended for use in diagnosis, cure, treatment or prevention of disease or other medical conditions." is that this makes it clear it is not a medical device. This is so the manufacturer makes it clear that a software application that, for example assists diagnosis, is a medical device but that the computer it runs on is general IT equipment and not a medical device. This actually makes sense but risks associated with the equipment still need to be controlled hence the wipes controlling risks of cross infection etc. Where it gets a little interesting is if the computer is in the patient environment (patient may touch it or user may touch patient while touching it) in which case it should meet the medical electrical safety standard (IEC 60601-1). They are sneaky here claiming compliance with 60601-1-2 which is just EMC and not safety.
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Tuesday 6th March 2018 17:06 GMT ibmalone
Re: Mistakes
I do not know why there is a question mark after the sentence about it being DICOM part 14 compliant. This is quite sensible and lother people make such monitors.
Will be interested to see what these cost, last time we priced some they were reassuringly expensive (and smaller), but consumer IPS has come down a lot since.
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Monday 12th March 2018 17:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Look up some of the common hospital cleaning wipes such as Chlorox or Cavi-Wipe and you'll see ingredients that will quickly damage screens and case finishes on devices that are actually being cleaned as often and as thoroughly as they should be in a clinical setting. The HP HC machines are meant to withstand those types of cleaning agents being used as they should be, all over the device and left damp to dry. It's easier for the clinicians and more likely they will be compliant when you can just tell them all surfaces of a particular device can be cleaned uniformly, rather than having to clean a keyboard differently than a screen, which might be different than the chassis, etc. It sounds petty to my peers outside of healthcare, but I think the simplicity of instruction on cleaning will result in safer devices at the bedside. Looking forward to testing this out, we've got swabs to culture at the ready.
Not sure what the equivalent is in the ROW, but for the US, a FIPS compliant fingerprint reader is forward thinking in that it will meet Federal requirements for signoff on electronic prescriptions of controlled substances. Standard FPRs and RFID can't be used in the EPCS signoff workflow. Great to have one integrated.