A disruptive step like renovating or relocating your IVF lab is the ideal opportunity to introduce the latest state-of-the-art technology that can maximize your culture environment and clinical potential
If you’re currently planning to renovate or relocate your IVF lab, read on. There are countless details and decisions to successfully undertake this scale of project. Cost, downtime, patients, equipment, staff, schedules—but don’t forget one of the most important decision opportunities: improving air purity. This one decision has been scientifically proven to significantly increase pregnancy rates and embryo quality.
The disruptive nature of a renovation project can be daunting. But seen in the right light, it’s an opportunity for your lab to adopt the best technology available for supporting your lab’s primary function. And the right decisions along these lines can translate into dramatic improvement in outcomes for your patients.
One of the most pervasive elements of a lab is its air. Conditioned, purified, kept at positive pressure for the most critical rooms in your facility, air can play a game-changing role in the medical—and business—function of your lab. The air purification solutions on the market offer an array of options ranging from HEPA filters to UV lights and beyond.
Is Pure Air Part of Your Plan?
Have you factored air purification into your construction plans? Should you? And if so, how should you choose the right air purification solution? There are several options on the market. And a handful of companies offering dedicated air purification for sensitive cleanroom environments. Each claim to have a strong impact to the outcomes and performance of the lab. But if you’re exploring these options, you should look closely at the features, and the numbers.Read “A Closer Look at One of the Most Intrusive Threats to Your IVF Lab”
For ideal air purity, HEPA filtration alone is inadequate. UV lights are a critical ingredient of the larger solution but must be the right type of UV lights. In addition, placement of the air purification system is important—rooftop, indoor, outdoor, not above your laboratory or clinical procedure rooms. Room dimensions, pressure rates, and changes per hour must be factored. The best solution is a multi-staged system that both captures and kills harmful VOCs, biologicals, and other potentially harmful contaminants.Below Measurable Levels
The way to know whether a system is right for you is to look at the resulting air quality metrics for each system. No solution can eliminate all contaminants. But the ideal system can reduce airborne pathogens to the point determined as critical for optimal embryogenesis or below measurable levels. That is the operative phrase: below measurable levels. This translates to the most pure air environment available for your lab and controlled rooms.
Most air quality remediation techniques operate in a “capture” paradigm utilizing HEPA filters only, a fixture that physically strains and captures the air for particles greater than a certain size. LifeAire uses a unique combination of “capture” and “kill” techniques, that exploit multiple physical properties—chemical affinities, biological weaknesses, and particle size—to produce superior quality air. The LifeAire System employs a specific UV array and proprietary molecular media killing many of the most common and deadly problem biologicals and remediating volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This kill step significantly reduces viable bioburden that would pass through a system containing only HEPA filters. Any biological material that does pass through our final stage filter has been rendered inviable, a marked improvement in sterility over the “capture-only” method. Further, any bioburden introduced to the environment via equipment or personnel will be recirculated back through our technology. This adds another significant risk reduction mechanism to any unwanted growth, batch loss, or sterility-based product recall from an initial breach.