HighTech Finland › Health Care & Life Sciences › All articles in this section   ›  A smarter, faster way to monitor surface hygiene

Diagnostics, Materials & Systems
All articles in this section


A smarter, faster way to monitor surface hygiene

Simple, reliable, and cost-effective methods are becoming increasingly important in the hygiene monitoring area, as a result of the selfmonitoring regulations covering food processing, cost constraints, and people’s growing general awareness of the importance of good hygiene. Orion Clean Card PRO signals a new, smarter way of ensuring that surfaces stay clean.

Food manufacturers, caterers, restaurants, and the café around the corner share one thing in common – they all need to do everything they can to ensure the safety and quality of their operations throughout the entire food chain.

Adequate cleaning, the proper use of cleaning products, as well as monitoring hygiene levels are essential parts of good hygiene practice. And ideally, the methods and tools used to monitor hygiene standards should be simple enough for virtually anyone to use, while still being capable of providing rapid and timely results to ensure that corrective action, if needed, can be taken immediately. Like many things, that is often easier said than done – which is why Orion Diagnostica has launched its patent-pending Orion Clean Card PRO.

One simple wipe

Orion Clean Card PRO is a new-generation, instrument- free hygiene test for monitoring one of the fundamentals of good hygiene: the effectiveness of surface cleaning practices.

With one simple wipe, the test card can detect any protein residue left on food contact surfaces after cleaning. Even small quantities of this type of residue can provide the conditions that micro-organisms need to thrive, increasing the risk of food poisoning pathogens and other harmful micro-organisms spreading and contaminating food.

Everything looks clean, but is it? Orion Clean Card PRO enables users to check very quickly that surfaces are as clean as they should be for safe food handling.

If the colour in the Orion Clean Card PRO’s test area changes within 30 seconds, protein residues are present, telling the user that the surface in question needs to be cleaned again.

How does it do it?

So how is the Orion Clean Card PRO able to give a virtually instant result like this? The secret lies in printed intelligence, combining printing technology with multidisciplinary expertise in microbiology, chemistry, material sciences, and product design.

The test reagent used to detect the presence of protein residues is printed on a tissue located under the perforated part of the card. When proteins are present on the surface and brought into contact with the reagent, an easy-to-see colour change from yellow to green or blue occurs. The darker the colour becomes, the more protein there is on the area that has been wiped. If the surface is clean, no colour change will take place.

The innovative concept behind Orion Clean Card PRO, made possible by roll-to-roll printing technology, helps ensure a safe food chain by making it simpler, faster, and more affordable to monitor the hygiene of all surfaces that are in contact with food.

In addition to food manufacturers and caterers, other organisations with stringent hygiene requirements can also benefit from using the test, for checking hygiene standards in operating theatres or hospital wards, for example.

Graph: Simple instructions.

Orion Diagnostica expertise

Orion Diagnostica is part of the Orion Group, Finland’s leading healthcare company, which develops, manufactures, and markets pharmaceuticals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and diagnostic tests for markets worldwide.

Orion Diagnostica specialises in easy-to-use, cost-e ective clinical diagnostic tests and hygiene monitoring solutions designed to improve healthcare e ectiveness and individual well-being. The focus is on products for primary healthcare that enable consultation, testing, and treatment decisions to be completed during a single patient visit. The company also serves large clinical laboratories that carry out high-volume analyses.

Orion Diagnostica’s product range covers diagnostic tests for detecting infectious diseases and disorders a ecting bone and soft-tissue metabolism, as well as specific protein and hormone assays. Its hygiene monitoring tests enable companies and institutions to detect contamination by micro-organisms or product residues and to monitor the e ectiveness of cleaning and disinfection routines in locations with strict hygiene requirements.

Orion Diagnostica’s flagship product is The QuikRead® system, a point-of-care system for measuring C-reactive protein on a fingerstick blood sample. The QuikRead® system also includes tests for detecting Strep A, measuring microalbuminuria, and detecting faecal occult blood.

Orion Diagnostica’s products are sold worldwide through subsidiaries, sales offices, and a distributor network covering more than 60 countries.

> Helvi Mustonen
(Published in HighTech Finland 2010)