Devicepoint for Healthy Water

  SPICA’s Legionella monitoring solution replaces traditional manual techniques with connected devices; taking real-time data readings on pipe temperature which feed into the Devicepoint dashboard for easy remote access.  Our unique IOT solution offers huge cost savings, better accuracy to exceed regulatory requirements, and a pro-active approach to tackling this widespread health risk.   

  Legionnaires’ disease is an acute respiratory infection caused by inhalation of the bacterium legionella neumophilia in its aerosol form. Symptoms are flu-like, and may progress to pneumonia; with 10-15% of cases proving fatal in the general community. The risk of infection is greatest in hospitals and other care facilities, as underlying illness is a major factor for acquisition of the disease. The hot water systems of healthcare facilities have been identified as the most frequent source of nosocomial legionella. Adding to the urgency of the problem, up to 95% of legionella cases in the UK go undiagnosed.   

  Health and safety legislation mandates that all employers, or people in control of premises (e.g. hospitals, nursing homes, offices, hotels), take appropriate steps to mitigate and deal with risks associated with Legionella bacteria.   A critical element of the control regime involves monitoring the temperature of water at certain points of the pipe system - this is currently a largely manual, costly and error-prone activity.  There are several challenges with this approach:   · Monitoring is manually intensive, so monitoring more (or all) of the pipe system is unfeasible · Manual monitoring, even when data-loggers are used, can be inaccurate · Only the data that was collected during monitoring can be analysed - there is no information that describes the behaviour of the pipe system at other times, and risks may go unnoticed. The incubation period of Legionella is only 10 days in water between 20 and 45 degrees centigrade, and since many organisations only monitor a small subset of the pipe system once per month, potential risks can go unnoticed.  

   SPICA’s Devicepoint  for Healthy Water is a much more efficient risk management tool, as part of a Legionella control regime. It constantly monitors the temperature of sections of pipe work, eliminates all of the manual work of reading and recording pipe temperature measurements, and provides a vastly superior picture of likely risks and pipe system usage.    We attach small temperature sensors to the surface of hot and cold water pipes at specified points in the pipe system. Those sensors constantly collect pipe surface temperature data and ambient temperature data and transmit the sensor information to the SPICA Devicepoint™ cloud platform. The data is stored and analysed in real-time, which allows the platform to pro-actively alert the appropriate staff members of risks, identify potential stagnant sections of the pipe system, and produce completely accurate monthly reports.   The sensors are battery powered and use a secured wireless network to communicate – there is no need to connect individual sensors to an open WiFi network, and our low power technology means that the sensors will continue to operate for at least 6 months before batteries need to be replaced.   The solution is entirely non-destructive - no changes to the pipe network, puncturing pipes, power or network cables are required.  

SPICA Technologies is a specialist Systems Integrator, focused on helping B2B clients adopt IOT technologies to deliver solid business outcomes