How much would it cost to put Air Purification in a typical healthcare practice?

In a doctor’s surgery or dental practice, air purification isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity. With large numbers of patients coming through the door each day, airborne infections can spread from patient to patient at frightening speed. 

Studies have shown that if six persons are in a shared and under-ventilated space and one of them is infectious with a virus like Covid, then the other five very likely to have become infected within just 4 hours.

Of perhaps still more importance to practices is the risk of staff members becoming infected. Confined in small rooms and having to examine and treat patients at close quarters, the likelihood of infection transmission from patient to staff is extremely high. With GPs working longer hours and having to deal with more patients than ever before, the last thing a practice needs is unnecessary absences due to preventable illnesses.

So how to deal with this problem? Following well publicised studies at the role of air purification in preventing infection spread, many practices are turning for solutions that are easy to implement quickly.  Typically the first choice of products are Air Purifiers that are equipped with HEPA Filters – which have been proven more than 99.99% effective in removing from the air particles 0.3 microns in size and above, as well as viruses like Covid and Flu amongst many others.

Sufferers from respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and hayfever will find that air purifiers will help with this as well, filtering out PM2.5 particles, dust, pollen and other allergens that aggravate and worsen symptoms every day.

That sounds great (and it is! 😊) but the question you are probably now asking yourself is – “Ok, so how much does this cost?”. Now, this can be a tricky question to answer. Your typical GP surgery varies from 5-15 doctors, while dental practices tend to be smaller but can still employ between 2-10 dentists.

So the best way to look at this is to work out the cost per room, and then multiply that by the number of rooms you have to get to the total cost for your practice.

A typical consulting/examination or treatment room is 10-12m2. If you allow a typical ceiling height of 2.4m, then the volume of air in the room is 24-28m3. The recommended guidelines for air purification in healthcare settings is that the air in a room needs to be filtered 10x per hour, so you need an Air Purifier with a capacity, or Clean Air Delivery Rate, of 240-288m3 per hour.

We have found that NHS clinics often prefer to have larger capacity units such as the ZONA 620 but you can achieve a decent air purification with a much smaller unit such as the Zona 250. Despite its compact size, (221 x 221 x 372mm), these machines have an impressive CADR rating of 250m3/hour. And they aren’t just attractive aesthetically, they’re priced attractively too, at only £179/ea including VAT and Delivery.  That’s less than £0.50 pence every day to have constantly pure air in a consulting room.

Beyond consulting rooms, it’s important you’re keeping patients safe in reception areas as well. Typically these are around 25-30m2 in size, so again you multiply this by your typical ceiling height of 2.4m to get your total volume of air in the room, in this case 60m3. In this instance, you’re going to need an Air Purifier with a CADR of 600m3/hour if you’re to meet the recommended guidelines for air changes an hour in healthcare settings.

We’d recommend for these rooms our most popular machine, the Zona 620. With a CADR of 620m3/hour, this is more than capable of filtering the air in these larger spaces effectively. Packed full of features like Activated Carbon filters to remove odours and VOCs, an automatic air quality sensor to adjust the fan speed as necessary and mobile app and smart Wi-Fi capability, it’s no surprise that these are best-sellers, especially when they are competitively priced at £799/ea – again, inclusive of VAT and Delivery costs!

Hopefully this helps you with your budgeting, but if you’d like a fully comprehensive review of your building and to take advantage of any quantity discounts that may be available, then simply send a copy of your floor plan through to enquiries@zonitise.com for a free and no obligation assessment by one of our technical advisors today!