Two Legionella prevention companies have partnered to eliminate Legionnaires’ outbreaks in the healthcare sector.

LiquiTech will integrate Spartan Bioscience‘s innovative environmental DNA testing platform to provide a new approach to detecting Legionella contamination. With Spartan’s test, Liquitech can detect Legionella contamination in real-time and provide immediate remediation using their multi-barrier approach to dramatically improve patient and guest safety. According to the press release, this will provide unparalleled control of Legionnaires’ disease in health care and hospitality environments.

Rapid detection and remediation for the health care sector are critical because sick and elderly people are at the highest risk of contracting Legionnaires’. Spartan’s press release explains that the problem with traditional Legionella detection method is lab culture testing in an off-site lab, which can take up to 14 days to provide a result. This turnaround time is too slow because Legionella can grow to outbreak levels in as few as seven days. Additionally, culture has been found to have a false negative rate of 62 per cent because Legionella dies on the way to the lab. In comparison, Spartan’s test provides highly-accurate results in 45 minutes using Nobel-Prize winning chemistry called quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR). qPCR is commonly used for medical diagnostics because it is faster and more accurate than culture.

“LiquiTech is a leader in water safety because of innovative technologies such as their Legionella copper-silver ionization solution,” said Paul Lem, CEO of Spartan Bioscience in the release. “We look forward to working with LiquiTech to prevent the risk of Legionella in water systems and to bring additional waterborne pathogen tests to the health care sector.”