These are times when a lot of healthcare professionals including doctors are venturing into the tech field. In order to bring out the best healthcare technology, it is vital that clinicians step into the field and spread their knowledge. 

But it is not always that doctors are on good terms with technology and technical knowledge. Here we have a physician who is passionate about healthcare technology, as much as, he is about medicine and we were extremely delighted to have got an opportunity to interact with him.

Dr Om Jha is a full-time Neonatologist and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, University of Southern California. He has multiple patents to his credit and has been founding member of few companies like Nanobio Healthcare LLC and Infection Sciences. We shall get to know how he became the 'Physician entrepreneur' through this interview series.

Dr Anitte Shah (AS): How did you start your medical journey?

Dr Jha: I started my career in medicine in India where I did my MBBS and MD in Pediatrics. I used to be Om Prakash Jha when I was in India. But when I came to the US, the middle name kind of becomes a middle initial. So I became Om Jha. I did my pediatric residency in the US and then did training in neonatology, which is the science of treating premature babies which was another three years after residency.

AS: When did you decide to venture into technology?

Dr Jha: I started my neonatology training in 2012. And in 2013 I came up with the concept for decreasing infection in the healthcare setting or especially the ICU setting. I had some experience with coming up and working on a device during my residency days, which was in Springfield, Illinois. So, I had an understanding of the basic workings of steps needed in medical device discovery.

AS: So you knew the concept, but isn't there a lot more technical stuff that one has to know before venturing into it? How did you learn all that?

Dr Jha: I was a full time medical resident working day and nights, but when I came up with the concept I had to teach myself the process of medical innovation. I used multiple open online courses (MOOC), these are short 6-8 week online courses from reputed universities available for minimal cost to anyone and everyone, a true democratization of education. I did courses on entrepreneurship, intellectual property, entrepreneurial negotiation and chewed though thousands of pages of FDA regulatory rule book. So it was just working on one idea and kind of learning through the whole process.

AS: Which was that one idea that changed your career?

Dr Jha: I had good bit of idea that bacteria can cause infections while the patient is in the ICU setting. That's what we call nosocomial infection, it’s an infection that the baby or patient did not come in with but ended up getting during this stay in the ICU. So there are a whole lot of things that can cause bacteria to go from one place to the other. I mean, just giving a simple example that we ourselves are covered with 5 billion bacteria on our skin.

And few of our organ system that are communicating with the outside world has many bacteria harboring in them like the Gastrointestinal tract and the respiratory system. Now, coming back to the skin part of things. So there was some data that you can have bacteria go from one place to the other, especially from high-touch surfaces around the patients.

AS: So what are these high-touch surfaces?

Dr Jha: High touch surfaces are those areas around the patient that the healthcare staff are touching frequently, like the monitor that continuously provides heart rate, respiration and blood pressures.

You have a ventilator screen that need to be touched to change the settings because the patient's need for ventilation is changing. You have medication pumps, that has buttons that the bedside nurse has to press to dial in numbers that determines the amount of medication going into the patient. So those are few examples of high-touch surfaces.

AS: Why are high touch surfaces so important or risky for that matter?

Dr Jha: The risk with the high touch surfaces is that they can be a reservoir of disease causing bacteria. Acknowledging this risk, healthcare facilities have protocols to clean these surfaces while the patient is admitted and do a terminal disinfection in between patients. Terminal disinfection, once the patient is out, the housekeeping staff should uses chemical disinfection, UV light. But one thing that I saw was in the healthcare setting, but going in and out of the ICU every day was the smartphone, a new "organ" that is attached to us all the time. So I thought that is it possible that the smartphones of the health care worker can be carrying some of these dangerous bacteria?

AS: Yes, indeed, and what happened next?

Dr Jha: Doing my research and looking at the medical literature, I found 30 or 40 different papers have been published in the last 10 -15 years and from different corners of the world saying that health care workers, handheld electronic devices, carry those dangerous bacteria that can cause nosocomial infection. So I was like okay, so there is a big pain point here.

AS: With so many publications data out there, were the hospital administrations doing something to deal with this issue?

Dr Jha: Yes, once the data came out, the hospital and ICU administration decided to do something about it. So they used what we call the disinfectant wipes.

These disinfectant wipes have strong chemicals in it which can kill bacteria on contact. Again, you cannot use it on living skin, but a handle device is an electronic device. So what they said, okay, let’s wipe the smartphone, that’s is being touched a lot and then the staff maybe touching the ‘high touch’ surfaces around the patient as mentioned previously and colonizing dangerous bacteria near the patient without even touching the patient.

Because when you touch the patient, you have to have gloves on and all that. But when you go in just to change the settings of the ventilator or the infusion pump or silencing the monitor. Later on during patient care the bacteria can get into the patient. So, the chain of bacteria movement from the personal device to that the instrumentation around the patient and finally into the patient.

So, every hospital administrator decided that when a person, nurse, physician, or anyone working in the ICU who will come in contact with a patient, walking in with their personal smartphones, they will wipe the phone down with the disinfectant wipes.

And they did studies on before and after using the disinfectant wipes, they took a swab from the front face of the phone and then took a swab right after cleaning it and it showed a significant decrease in bacterial count, and that was the end of the story for everyone.

Hurry up! Join the Medical Internship 3.0! 

Well the story isn't over for us yet. Stay tuned to MedBound Times for Part-2 of this interview series.

Medically reviewed by Dr Om Jha