News Archive

From February 1 - 3, 2015 the 3rd Emirati German Medical Congress will be held in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. On February 2 starting from 3:30 p.m. Dr. Florian H. H. Brill and Mr. Martin Orlick will lead a workshop focusing on infection prevention and control 2020.Date: 1 - 3 February, 2015Time: 9:00 - 17:00Venue: Building M25-  Al Razi Auditorium – Medical and of Health Sciences CampusTarget Audience: All Healthcare ProfessionalsFor details and registration, kindly please visit this page http://www.uosctc.com/Emiratigermancongress.html Abstract Workshop: Infection Prevention and Control 2020:Modern medicine presents huge challenges for healthcare workers. These include understanding new scientific information, regulatory requirements, documentation, study results as well as innovative medicine, treatment strategies and devices in their daily practice. Sometimes hands on patient care drifts into the background due to these challenges. In addition, new developments such as telemedicine and medical tourism have changed patient care from one single local physician with their team overseeing patient care to an international team of specialized medical staff, which in some cases do not even know each other. Despite this, patient well-being and safety needs to be a fundamental part of all patient care and has to be our central aim. One quality marker and safety aspect for both patient and staff is the rate of complications such as nosocomial infections. Therefore, infection prevention and control has globally become of growing importance over the past years. In times of Multi-Drug-Resistant Organisms (MDRO) such as MRSA, ESBL and VRE, international as well as national programs are needed to ensure patient safety.Patients are aware of these challenges and expect excellent hygienic conditions during their contact with the healthcare system. At the same time patients are more mobile and do not only select the best facility in their city or country, but also consider other countries or regions for their planned hospital stays. This also challenges the infection prevention and control strategies as demonstrated during the influenza pandemic, where the H1N1 viruses spread along flight routes rapidly throughout the world. Infection prevention and control is one important key quality and influences all processes of clinical practice. Therefore, it has to be managed professionally and used as a major management tool to avoid a loss in efficiency of the clinical staff and their processes. The global WHO campaign for patient safety „Clean Care is Safer Care“ led my Professor Didier Pittet from Geneva, for example, is one campaign focusing on increasing the awareness of hand hygiene importance. It includes more than 120 countries and promotes hand hygiene with alcohol-based hand rubs.With ICAP, we provide an infection prevention and control accreditation program for healthcare facilities such as hospitals, dental and veterinary clinics. Our infection prevention and control program is approved by German hygiene experts, in the process of the international ISQua accreditation and meets international standards such as US-CDC, European-CDC and German Robert-Koch-Institute as well as the regional GCC-standards. Globally, the importance of hygiene increases constantly. Therefore, our ICAP certificate shows to potential patients that the risk for a post-operative infection is as low as technically possible, which is very important especially for patients that visit a particular country for a medical treatment and leave the country before any clinical infection may become obvious.

The final EN 16615 will be published in 2015. This is a completely new phase 2 step 2 test protocol for efficacy evaluation of surface disinfection procedures that has been developed mainly by the group of Dr. Jürgen Gebel of the University Hospital in Bonn, Germany. For the first time, a practice-like test is available for efficacy testing of wipe systems, which are used increasingly in the clinical practice. On a large PVC-carrier (20 x 50 cm) the impregnated wipe will be applied with a standardized procedure to simulate the disinfection of small surfaces. Disinfectants can be tested with a defined standard wipe or a different wipe, which is recommend by the manufacturer, also ready to use wipe systems can be tested according to the so called "4-field-test". The name comes from the fact that in this test assay not only the disinfecting efficacy on a contaminated surface is tested, but also the spread to other parts of the carrier. This will be tested on the remaining 3 fields, which have not been contaminated upfront. We participated at the CEN ring trials and established this method in our lab as a standard method. The test results from more than 30 different formulation show that the 4-field-test is challenging for the test preparations.We are performing efficacy testing of wipe systems since 2007. We developed our own method based on the EN 13697 and DGHM 2001, method 14. The published literature and our data are showing that there are many details influencing the efficacy of these systems including application method, impregnation volume and time, type of wipe fabric, processing of the fabric, type of disinfectant solution. We are sure that some of these and other new aspects influencing the efficacy testing of wipe systems will be discussed in the near future.If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Hamburg, 8 - 9 October 2015 Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH - Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology and the DR. BRILL ACADEMY proudly present in association with Life Science Nord GmbH the first Conference of Applied Hygiene, Microbiology and Virology in Hamburg, Germany. The conference will serve as a platform for scientific know-how and information transfer as well as a discussion forum focusing on efficacy testing, development, registration and application of infection prevention and control products such as disinfectants and antiseptics. The DR. BRILL ACADEMY seminars, annually performed since 2012, provided the basis for this conference. By extending the concept significantly, the conference will combine the knowledge of highly recognized experts of the applied sciences of hygiene, microbiology and virology with hands-on experiences from the user. Kindly see below an extract of the program:Efficacy testing of disinfectants and antiseptics 2020, special focus on efficacy testing of hand hygiene products, Chair: Dr. Jochen Steinmann and Dr. Florian H. H. Brill, Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology, HamburgHot topic virus transmission, epidemics and control, Ebola, Hepatitis C, MERS-Corona, Chair: PD Dr. Eike Steinmann, University Hospital Hannover and Twincore Research Center, HannoverEpidemiology and Control of Multi-Drug-Resistant Organisms, Chair: PD Dr. Jörg Steinmann, University Hospital EssenMicrobiological Safety of Cosmetics, Chair: Dr. Ulrich Eigener, Hamburg.The conference will be held on October 8th and 9th in the Ameron Speicherstadt Hotel in Hamburg, which is located in the scenic and historic "Speicherstadt". Before the official opening of the conference on October 8th at 1 PM, a workshop covering the basics of microbiology, virology, efficacy testing and registration of infection control products will be held.We kindly invite specialists for research and development and registration from the infection prevention and control as well as medical device industry to attend the conference. Experts from competent authorities e.g. for biocidal product registration, interested scientists and medical doctors are also kindly welcomed to contribute to an open communication and know-how transfer between industry and user of the respective products.Please save the date. We would be more than happy to welcome you in Hamburg. For pre-registration please send an email to Mrs Gesche von der Lieth (gesche.vonderlieth@brillhygiene.com). Further conference details including the program will be communicated very soon and published on our website www.brillhygiene.com.Your scientific committee of the Conference of Applied Hygiene, Microbiology and Virology (in alphabetical order):Dr. Florian H. H. BrillDr. Holger BrillPD Dr. Eike SteinmannDr. Jochen SteinmannPD Dr. Jörg Steinmann

Since 09.01.2015 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ojan Assadian is part of the scientific advisory board of Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH. We are very pleased that Univ.-Prof. Dr. Assadian will enhance our scientific know-how with his outstanding expertise in the fields of epidemiology, prevention and therapy of infections.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ojan Assadian was born in Vienna. He has a board certification for hygiene and environmental health and is an expert for infectiology and tropical medicine. With several breaks due to temporary employment abroad, he was working for the Medical University Vienna and the General Hospital of Vienna – medical university campus – since 1999. In January 2015, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ojan Assasdian took over the professorship for "Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention" at the University of Huddersfield in the UK and took over the scientific lead of the correspondent institute. His medical interest is focusing on diagnostic, therapy and prevention of infection diseases with a special focus on epidemiology and prevention of nosocomial infections as well as therapy and prevention of wound infections.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Assadian is reviewer and co-editor of international scientific journals, editor and author of two textbooks in the field of cleaning, disinfection, sterilization and general hygiene as well as author of more than 190 international publications. In addition, he is president of the Austrian Society for Hospital Hygiene (ÖGKH).

In October 2014 the DR. BRILL ACADAMY Seminar on efficacy testing of disinfectants took place for the third time. Under the banner of “Registration and Efficacy Evaluation of Disinfections” DR. BRILL + PARTNER GmbH Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology has given an overview of the latest national and European developments concerning the efficacy evaluation of biocides as well as hands-on experiences about the implementation of registration procedures with regards to the biocide products directive. Special topics were the upcoming mandatory article 95-listing of suppliers of biocidal substances, the efficacy testing of cleaning products as well as the reprocessing of medical devices incl. validation. An active exchange even amongst the participants and the traditional maritime supporting program contributed to the success of the seminar. As we have received marvelous feedback, we would like to keep sharing the knowledge and experiences and will expand the seminar to a conference in October 2015.

We are delighted to present our newly designed and joint Dr. Brill + Dr. Steinmann website. The structure and design have been revised completely in order to offer you a more customer-oriented navigation by sectors. Our services of laboratory, consulting and training for the different sectors such as disinfection, medical devices or cosmetics are mapped out clearly and comprehensively. Furthermore, we offer you the very comfortable possibility to choose your topic of interest from our list of services and send us any request directly via the website. Since the merger with MikroLab GmbH Labor für Angewandte Mikrobiologie in Bremen, this also applies to all virucidal queries.

On 18 July 2014 the first Scientific Advisory Board of Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH was founded. The Advisory Board will support the organization in its strategic-scientific development. We are delighted to announce that the well-known scientific expert of virology PD Dr. rer. nat. Eike Steinmann from Twincore-Institute located at the Hanover Medical School has been elected to be the first chairman of the board. For further information please click here.

We are delighted to announce that the two well-established family-owned companies Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH Institut für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie, Hamburg and MikroLab GmbH Labor für Angewandte Mikrobiologie, Bremen have been merged. With this merger, we will be able to offer you, our valued customers, a complete range of efficacy testing of disinfectants and antiseptics against bacteria, viruses, yeasts, fungi, mycobacteria as well as aerobic and anaerobic bacteria spores. We will keep offering our laboratory, consulting and training services at the highest level. However, the extended range of microbiological efficacy testing perfectly complements one another. Therefore, it allows us to serve you more efficient as our services come from a single source.Quality – Experience – Service – Expertise – Everything these two companies stand for, will keep distinguishing us in the future. In addition, a smooth transition to the next generation and the continuance of the respective core competencies and contact persons in Bremen and Hamburg is ensured.We look forward to continuing our successful and trustful collaboration with you in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact us at any time, if you have any wishes or questions.

Especially for manufacturers of cosmetics, we developed a package which will provide you with consulting, training and laboratory services in the field of hygiene and microbiology. In addition, we offer you the preparation of safety evaluations and reports according to the new EU cosmetic regulation. Please click here to find out more about our cosmetic services.

In January 2014, Dr. Florian H.H. Brill gave the starting signal for the sales operations in the whole Middle East Region as well as India by opening a Free Zone Limited Liability Company (FZ-LLC) in the Dubai Biotechnology & Research Park (DuBiotech) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The opening ceremony of our first subsidiary abroad was hosted on the side-lines of Arab Health 2014. It was our pleasure to welcome officials, partners and customers from Germany, the UAE and the region. In addition, we were pleased to welcome our guests and speakers Mr. Marwan Abdulaziz, Executive Director of DuBiotech, H.H. Elke Badde, State Secretary of the Hamburg Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection, Dr Bassem El-Sayed Zayed from the Ministry of Health Oman and Prof.  Dr. Hans-Jörg Schmidt-Trenz, CEO of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry.According to Dr. Florian Brill, “the market offers great opportunities and the healthcare demand is increasing on two levels; qualitative, in order to reach an international standard and quantitative, in order to provide the rising population with a proper healthcare system.” Hence, the investments by the public and private sector are increasing constantly. Mrs. Kirsten Staab, Director of the Healthcare Industry Service Center – Hamburg Representative Office UAE, confirms Dr. Brills point of view and said “Dubai, for example, developed a strategic plan for 2015 where they explicitly mention the importance of the healthcare sector. On the one hand, they have to increase the quality and availability of healthcare to the local population. On the other hand, Dubai focuses on the development of its healthcare sector in terms of international medical patient care.” Dr. Brill forecasts high potentials and great opportunities for his services.