Ondine Biomedical Inc. (LON: OBI), the Canadian life sciences company pioneering light-activated antimicrobial treatments, announces that Mater Hospital, North Sydney, a private hospital in New South Wales, has become the first Australian hospital to start using its light-activated antimicrobial Steriwave® technology to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Mater Hospital, located in North Sydney and founded in 1906, is part of St. Vincent’s Health Australia Group, Australia’s largest not-for-profit provider of health and aged care services.

Medical Oncologist, Professor Frances Boyle AM, Director of the Patricia Ritchie Centre for Cancer Care and Research at Mater Hospital and Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Sydney, said: “We are very pleased to be the first hospital in Australia to have the Steriwave nasal decolonization system. The pathogens patients carry have long been known to cause hospital-acquired infections, especially for the weak and immunocompromised. Having a rapid non-antibiotic approach to decolonizing the nose – a major source of infection transmission – is a benefit to our patients.”

Orthopaedic Spine Surgeon Dr John Street, Director of the Integrated Ambulatory Spine Program at Vancouver Coastal Health and upcoming President of the Canadian Spine Society, was a keynote speaker at the recent 2024 Spine Society of Australia 35th Annual Scientific Meeting that was held in Sydney on April 5-7^th, 2024. Dr Street presented the results of his team’s 14-year study evaluating Steriwave’s effect on SSIs following spine surgery at Vancouver General Hospital (“VGH”), concluding that Steriwave nasal photodisinfection should be part of routine use and recommended it as standard of care for all elective and emergent spine surgeries.

The VGH research involved 13,493 patients and demonstrated a 66.5% reduction (7.98% vs 2.67%, p<0.001) in surgical site infections (SSIs) following spine surgery when Ondine’s Steriwave nasal photodisinfection (nPDT) was implemented in the universal pre-surgical infection prevention protocol. The researchers also found average net annual cost saving of $2.49 million, a saving of over $2,400 per spine surgery patient, post rollout.