St. Joseph Medical Center in Houston Deploys World’s Only Biodefense Indoor Air Protection System

Houston’s first hospital, 134-year-old St. Joseph Medical Center, has installed Integrated Viral Protection (IVP) technology throughout its facilities, taking a major step in preventing the spread of airborne illnesses. IVP’s Biodefense Indoor Air SystemTM is the only existing air filtration system that instantaneously catches and kills airborne COVID-19 (99.999%) and other airborne viruses in a single pass.

St. Joseph Medical Center is the first hospital in the nation to install the IVP technology, which meets ASHRAE standards and has been granted emergency use authorization by the FDA during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospital has 700 beds with more than 500 physicians and 1,500 employees – and now hosts 24 of the biodefense units in patient waiting areas, admitting areas, staff lounges, cafeteria, surgical suites, its COVID-19 clinic and other high traffic zones.

“As St. Joseph Medical Center continues to position itself as a center of excellence, we look forward to implementing the IVP technology within our facility to further protect our patients, staff, and visitors, especially as we continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Kim Bassett, RN, MBA, President of St. Joseph Medical Center. “The state-of-the-art technology will complement and extend the standards we already have in place in our pursuit to provide the highest quality of patient care.”

St. Joseph Medical Center is a member of Steward Health Care, the largest private, for-profit health care network in the United States. The company is owned and led by a management team of Steward physicians, employs more than 40,000 health care professionals, and operates 35 hospitals across the country. The medical center was acquired in 2017 by Steward and is undergoing an $80 million renovation.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has created enormous challenges for the healthcare industry, among others, and we wanted to find a way to kill the virus to make indoor air safer for all,” said Monzer Hourani, IVP creator. “Hospitals and other health care environments require the highest quality indoor air we can provide to fully emerge from this public health crisis. This technology will protect people from airborne viruses for years to come, whether it be Covid-19, flu virus, or others.”

The system was designed by Hourani, who has a background in physics, science and engineering. The revolutionary technology works by forcing air through a heated filter that captures and kills contaminants, including airborne pathogens, instantaneously, without significantly changing the ambient air temperature. Hourani was recently named Top 25 Newsmaker of the Year and given the Award of Excellence by the Engineering News-Record for his ground breaking invention.

For more information, visit www.steward.org.

For IVP contact:

Lauren Velasco, [email protected] 847-567-4322

For St. Joseph Medical Center:

Karen Chitty, [email protected] 713-756-8236