If you were to think about what some of the dirtiest surfaces you might have come in contact with, you may or may not be surprised to learn that it is actually your mobile device, like your smartphone or even your tablet. So imagine if you’re a doctor fighting Ebola and you’re covered head to toe, are you really expected to work with such an unsanitary device?
Turns out that doctors may no longer have to, thanks to the efforts of Google who have actually created a tablet that is able to withstand chlorine sanitization, as per a report by Wired. The tablet came about when a doctor, Jay Achar, asked his colleague Ivan Gayton for a more efficient way to transfer medical records. Gayton turned to Google’s charitable branch Google.com where they came up with a tablet safe enough to be transported to and from medical facilities without bringing along any of the viruses.
The entire tablet is encased in polycarbonate which is typically used due to its ability to withstand high temperatures and also because it was relatively impact-resistant. This also allowed the tablet to be dipped inside chlorine where it has to stay for 10 minutes before it is considered safe and sanitized enough to be taken outside of high-risk zones.
The tablet will also see use outside of the fight against Ebola, thanks to Eric D. Perakslils, a doctor at Harvard Medical School who is working with Médecins Sans Frontières to help open source the tablet’s technology so that developers will be able to modify its software and hardware to be used against other diseases.
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