WG 29.0 - ESD in Healthcare

The WG focused on adjudicating the high-level comments from TAS on ESD TR29.0-01 “Guidance for Control of Electrostatic Hazards in Healthcare Facilities”.

The working group continued the development of the new technical report ESD TR29.0-01.

The working group reviewed last remaining major additions to the new technical report on guidance for control of electrostatic hazards in healthcare facilities.

WG focused on the review of the draft for TR29 “Guidance for Control of Electrostatic Hazards in Healthcare Facilities”. 

The WG hopes to complete the draft of the TR and submit it to TAS for their review and comment.

A presentation was given on some case studies of hospital hazards recently encountered by a WG member. The WG reviewed some of the comments from TAS on the latest draft of ESD TR29.0-01, “Guidance for Control of Electrostatic Hazards in Healthcare Facilities”. Edits were made, and the document will be prepared for resubmittal to TAS.

The purpose of this meeting was to adjudicate a new round of comments received from TAS on TR29.

At the last meeting, we completed adjudicating a round of comments from TAS.  Those were completed and the document was resubmitted to TAS for any additional comments.  New comments were received back from PAC prior to the meeting.  Most of the comments were editorial in nature and we were able to address those prior to the meeting.  We were able to adjudicate all comments requiring adjudication during the meeting. 

The document now needs to be updated based on the adjudication.  Tom agreed to complete that work and get the document back to TAS, hopefully for final approval.    

Our next meeting will be during the September meeting series.  We plan to begin the process of creating a plan to promote the document.  Some suggestions from last meeting included creating a short video on why this document is important and what it provides and writing an article for InCompliance magazine. 

Summary of discussions/activities/document reviews during the most recent WG meeting.

• TR 29 was published in May 2024. We met to discuss how to promote the document and spread the word to the healthcare community. Many great ideas were offered, including speaking at conferences, publishing articles, promoting to the design community, working with the NFPA.  Members promised to see what they could drum up.  Since we are not working on a document, we decided not to meet in March and communicate via email on progress. 

The group reviewed and discussed an initial draft of the new ESD TR29.

Summary of meeting activities:

The committee reviewed current draft sections of ESD TR29.0-01. The group also identified the next sections the group will continue working on.

Summary of meeting activities:

The group finalized an outline for a new technical report. A writing team has been formed to create the document content and a task group was created to develop an industry survey.

Summary of meeting activities:

This was the second meeting for the ad hoc group. The group reviewed and summarized SEMI E-78, and identified additional sectors such as: semi back end/assembly & test, fiber optics, other optics, board manufacturing, MEMs devices, and incoming materials. A decision was made to divide into key industry sectors with sub groups to have one or more calls prior to the April meeting and present at the April meeting findings such as key problems, perform a literature survey, and a potential direction.  Sectors identified are: basic electrostatics & particle physics, data storage (possibly), painting and surface treatments, general manufacturing, semiconductor, fiber optics, medical, aerospace, and military.

Summary of meeting activities:

The group discussed reasons for considering ESD control in healthcare facilities and existing documents related to ESD control in healthcare facilities.