Disinfection Technology/Methods for Computer Equipment?

smammon asks: "I manage the IT department for a pretty average hospital. Our equipment is used everywhere, including the patient rooms, operating suites, and hallways. We expect it to move into more areas (hands) in the future with advent of more and more wireless/handheld technology. Our problem is that even with constant employee education and regular maintenance/cleaning efforts on our part - it is still very common for equipment to become contaminated with all manner of nasty goo. We have been looking for a method of disinfection that kills the bugs without killing the equipment. So far the only reasonably good looking alternative is vaporized hydrogen peroxide. Problem is that it's not known to positively kill the kind of tough bug that lives on surfaces. Anyone know of, developing, or selling a method for disinfection of sensitive equipment? Any innovative solutions from the geek collective?"

Comments

Hulk jokes aside...

[Otter]

...would gamma irradiation work? Normally that would be perfect for non-destructive sterilization (and you may already have the equipment) but I have no idea what it would do to microelectronics.

So, what does kill the bugs?

[PD]

Will rubbing alcohol do? Or do you need to use hydrogen fluoride to kill the bugs? If you want to have a keyboard that will stand up to X antibiotic, then you need to tell us what X is.

I'd recommend getting a waterproof keyboard and disinfect it like you'd clean a trash can. But if you're going to give it a betadine bath, you probably want something that won't discolor.

Something anhydrous, naturally

[dacarr]

There is mention of drunk mouse syndrome, wherein a declared alcoholic mouse (yes, see the link) was sent to be "dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath". As I understand it, this is not dissimilar to the anhydrous dips that they used to dunk crufty keyboards into to clean them as well.

To wit, while this may not totally *disinfect* your gear, this will most certainly decruft it.

A dishwasher will often clean

[bluGill]

You can get the goo off of most keyboards in a normal household dishwasher, so long as your water heater isn't set too high. Just make sure things are dried out properly before you try using them again. This won't sterilize things, but if you do it regularly you can at least make sure there is nothing for the nasties to eat when they do get inside. (Which does not solve all problems, but helps a great deal)

Note that you need to do a full backup before trying this, and I'd try it with some sacrificial systems first. Wouldn't surprize me if harddrives and cdroms don't survive this treatment. See if you can re-oil all the fans. At least find out how long the average machine survives a this. If you find a machine normally last 48 cycles, then plan on once a month washings, and throw them away (recycle) after 4 years. This should help a lot A lot of labor, but I know of system admins who regularly take a keyboard home for washing.

From what I understand about hospital breading sterilzation resistant strains of nasties, I would want you throwing everything out every few years anyway. I'm not an expert, but I would think that you are like most other IT deparments with plenty of obsolete, throw away, machines that you can expiriment with before working with machine you care about. Once you know what works and for how long you can make a plan which includes a few (statistical number of) machines not surviving.