Sanitation monitoring system using pathogen surrogates and surrogate tracking
A sanitation management system maintains records of exemplary locations on an item to be sanitized and indicates those locations to a person or system charged with applying a pathogen surrogate prior to a sanitation process. The sanitation management system maintains records of where the pathogen surrogate was applied prior to the sanitation process. Following the sanitation process, the sanitation management system indicates to an inspector, or an inspection system, locations of where the pathogen surrogate was applied for the purpose of facilitating testing of the sanitation process by checking for the presence of the pathogen surrogate at some or all of those locations. This can ensure that the inspection process is relevant to the sanitation process and less likely to generate false negatives where the inspection finds a lack of the pathogen surrogate not due to cleaning, but due to lack of application of the pathogen surrogate.
1. A sanitation management system comprising:
a computer capable of maintaining records of exemplary locations on an item to be sanitized and records of where a pathogen surrogate was applied prior to a sanitation process, the pathogen surrogate comprising a carrier that mimics biological behavior of pathogens that create biofilms;
an augmented reality display that can display marks corresponding to the exemplary locations undergoing sanitation;
an interface to gather information about how the pathogen surrogate was applied to the exemplary locations; and
an inspection interface to provide sampling locations at which to check for presence of the pathogen surrogate at some or all of the exemplary locations.
2. The sanitation management system of claim 1 , wherein the pathogen surrogate comprises non-coding DNA sequences that form tags or tag sequences.
3. The sanitation management system of claim 2 , wherein the pathogen surrogate comprises tags, or tag sequences, and the carrier.
4. The sanitation management system of claim 3 , wherein the carrier comprises one or more of water, alcohol, wax, oil, or other base.
5. The sanitation management system of claim 4 , wherein the carrier comprises a carrier biofilm and the carrier biofilm has characteristics selected to mimic biological behavior of microorganisms that create natural biofilms.
6. The sanitation management system of claim 1 , wherein the pathogen surrogate comprises a tag bound to the carrier, wherein the tag comprises a DNA sequence corresponding to an N-bit tag value, and wherein the carrier is non-toxic.
7. The sanitation management system of claim 1 , wherein the pathogen surrogate comprises a plurality of tags wherein each tag of the plurality of tags comprises a DNA sequence bound to an instance of the carrier with the DNA sequence representing tag value, wherein the plurality of tags represent a plurality of tag values and wherein the tags of the plurality of tags are unbound to each other.
8. The sanitation management system of claim 1 , wherein the carrier is a PLGA-based carrier comprising a biodegradable copolymer of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) having a determined PLGA hydrolysis rate dependent on a ratio of lactic acid to glycolic acid used, whereby a degradation rate of the pathogen surrogate is aligned with a target pathogen.
9. The sanitation management system of claim 1 , wherein the records of where the pathogen surrogate was applied comprises records for a plurality of pathogen surrogates that are applied, the plurality of pathogen surrogates comprising at least a first pathogen surrogate comprising a first carrier and a second pathogen surrogate comprising a second carrier, wherein the first carrier has a first level of resilience to the sanitation process and the second carrier has a second level of resilience to the sanitation process, whereby a low resilience carrier is more easily removed during the sanitation process as compared to a high resilience carrier, to provide an indication of a degree of sanitation.
10. The sanitation management system of claim 9 , wherein each pathogen surrogate of the plurality of pathogen surrogates is applied with an associated degree of resilience, and the sanitation management system further comprises a sampler for reading relative concentrations of the plurality of pathogen surrogates following the sanitation process.
11. The sanitation management system of claim 10 , wherein each pathogen surrogate further comprises a plurality of tags, each bound to a particular carrier characterized by a degree of resilience, whereby the degree of sanitation is determined based on which of the plurality of tags are found in that the sampling locations.
12. A method of performing sanitation of an item to be sanitized, the method comprising:
reading, into a computer system capable of providing a display, records of exemplary locations on the item to be sanitized;
obtaining a pathogen surrogate comprising a carrier that mimics biological behavior of pathogens that create biofilms;
displaying, to a person or a system charged with applying the pathogen surrogate prior to a sanitation process, indicia corresponding to the exemplary locations undergoing the sanitation process;
applying the pathogen surrogate to application locations of the exemplary locations;
recording information about how the pathogen surrogate was applied to the application locations; and
following a sanitation process sanitizing the item, sampling selected locations of the application locations to check for presence of the pathogen surrogate at some or all of the selected locations.
13. The method of claim 12 , wherein displaying the indicia comprises displaying the indicia on an augmented reality display used by the person charged with applying the pathogen surrogate.
14. The method of claim 12 , wherein recording information about how the pathogen surrogate was applied to the application locations comprises:
following a prompt to the person charged with applying the pathogen surrogate, using a camera, determining that the person applied the pathogen surrogate; and
determining that where the person applied the pathogen corresponds to a prompted location.
15. The method of claim 12 , wherein the pathogen surrogate comprises a plurality of tags wherein each tag of the plurality of tags comprises a DNA sequence bound to an instance of the carrier with the DNA sequence representing tag value, wherein the plurality of tags represents a plurality of tag values and wherein the tags of the plurality of tags are unbound to each other.
16. The method of claim 12 , wherein the carrier comprises a carrier biofilm and the carrier biofilm has characteristics selected to mimic biological behavior of microorganisms that create natural biofilms.
17. The method of claim 12 , wherein the carrier is a PLGA-based carrier comprising a biodegradable copolymer of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) having a determined PLGA hydrolysis rate dependent on a ratio of lactic acid to glycolic acid used, whereby a degradation rate of the pathogen surrogate is aligned with a target pathogen.
18. The method of claim 12 , wherein recording information about how the pathogen surrogate was applied to the application locations comprises recording records for a plurality of pathogen surrogates that are applied, the plurality of pathogen surrogates comprising at least a first pathogen surrogate comprising a first carrier and a second pathogen surrogate comprising a second carrier, wherein the first carrier has a first level of resilience to the sanitation process and the second carrier has a second level of resilience to the sanitation process, whereby a low resilience carrier is more easily removed during the sanitation process as compared to a high resilience carrier, to provide an indication of a degree of sanitation.
19. The method of claim 18 , further comprising:
applying each pathogen surrogate of the plurality of pathogen surrogates with an associated degree of resilience; and
following the sanitation process, reading a sampler to determine relative concentrations of the plurality of pathogen surrogates following the sanitation process.
20. The method of claim 12 , wherein each pathogen surrogate further comprises a plurality of tags, each bound to a particular carrier characterized by a degree of resilience, whereby the degree of sanitation is determined based on which of the plurality of tags are found in that the sampling locations.