Hospital-Acquired Infections

According to a story done by ABC News, the incidence of hospital-acquired infections is 2 Million cases per year, which results in over 90,000 deaths. This number of deaths is higher than those from AIDS, breast cancer and accidents combined. Hospitals have reacted to this problem with valiant efforts. ASM is developing for them a tool to determine whether or not an environment has been properly disinfected and thus prevent and reduce the rate of such infections. This product will be cost effective, reliable, readily available and simple to operate. These rapid detection devices are needed all over the world, where people experience hospital-acquired illnesses and where there is a threat from infectious pathogens.

Wall Street Journal [PDF]
Newsday [PDF]
BBC News [PDF]
Palm Beach Post [PDF]

Community Acquired Illnesses

In a current Reader’s Digest article, it was reported that there are approximately 2.3 million people in the USA that are carriers of CA-MRSA (Community Acquired). It is a more virulent killer staph bacteria than the HAI strains and is at epidemic proportions. ASM will be focused on community facilities and the hospitality industry. It will be able to idenify for management and cleaning staff whether or not endospores, and thus the potential for infectious diseases, are present in various environments such as hotel rooms, restaurants, cruise ships, sporting venues, locker rooms, spas, martial arts schools, training facilities and gyms, or any other public environment where such diseases may exist. The detector products will be designed to quickly answer the question whether or not live spores are present in specific places, such as door knobs, remote controls, toilet seats and more.

Reader's Digest [PDF]
CBS News [PDF]

Household Mold

To help homeowners identify and remove mold from their homes, ASM plans to develop and sell products to do-it-yourself stores such as Lowe’s, the Home Depot, Ace, True Value and Wal-Mart. It is envisioned that these companies will purchase an analyzer computer that can analyze the samples, with results in 4 minutes. Customers will purchase test kits that will contain four test strips, take the samples themselves and bring them back to the store to be analyzed. Once the results are printed by the analyzer computer, a store associate will be trained to recommend to each customer what they need to do in order to get rid of the mold in their home.

ASM plans to sell units to contractors, HVAC companies, and mold remediation companies so they can offer the detection as a service to their customers. These companies can show their customers that they have a mold problem and sell remedial services. The mold detection products, when developed, will provide the market with a reliable tool to quickly answer the question of whether or not spores from mold are present in specific places in a home such as bathrooms, basement, HVAC vents, walls and more.