Hospital
indoor air quality.
Hospital indoor air quality affects patients, staff and the energy your HVAC system uses. So ThinkLite Air gives your facility team one system: ICON cleans room air, Flair measures it room by room, and real-time CO₂ data goes to your building management system (BMS).
For waiting areas, nurse stations, patient rooms and the teams who run them.
See the workflow
One day on a hospital floor.
Follow a waiting area from opening to the next morning. Then watch how Flair readings, your BMS and ICON work together. All values are examples.
Before clinic hours, the BMS holds the waiting area at its required minimum airflow. ICON is already running.
One connected system
One system for hospital indoor air quality.
Treat the air, measure it and ventilate to need. Each part does one job, and together they cover the room air and the air your HVAC system delivers.
ICON M cleans the room air
Activated carbon, an enclosed UV chamber and ULPA filters, running continuously.
Flair shows what is in the air
CO₂, particle count and mass, TVOC, temperature and humidity, in real time.
Your BMS ventilates to need
Flair sends CO₂ to your BMS. Your BMS moves the dampers.
Airlytics shows what changed
Alerts, history, reports and the Health Index for every room.
Patient safety
1 in 38 patients. On any given day.
That is the latest CDC survey figure for U.S. hospitals: on any given day, about 1 in 38 patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection (HAI). CDC survey, NEJM 2026.
Many HAIs come from devices, procedures and contact. However, some pathogens also travel through the air on small particles. So air treatment is one layer of infection prevention: it works alongside hand hygiene, cleaning, PPE and your clinical protocols, and it does not replace them.
Inside ICON
Follow the air. Three stages in one pass.
ICON pulls room air in at the base, treats it in an enclosed chamber and then returns it through the side outlets. Because it works on its own, it supports hospital indoor air quality in waiting areas and staff spaces without changing your HVAC system.
| Fan | Airflow (CFM) | Sound (dB) |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | 290 | 40.3 |
| 40% | 302 | 44.3 |
| 60% | 402 | 45.5 |
| 80% | 804 | 64.0 |
| 100% | 879 | 65.9 |
Why particle size matters
Small particles. Drawn to scale.
Bacterial cells and spores range from about 0.3 to 10 µm. Most infectious particles from human breath travel as droplet nuclei of 0.5 to 5 µm (Cole and Cook, 1998). Both are larger than the 0.1 µm particles ULPA filters are rated to capture.
So, running continuously, ICON is designed to lower the room’s overall particle load, including bacteria-sized particles.
Particle sizes on one scale
Size ranges: Cole & Cook, AJIC 1998Swipe sideways to see the full chart.
See the result, room by room
Flair counts particles from 0.1 µm to 10 µm and reports particle mass from PM0.1 to PM10.
It measures. It does not identify.
Flair measures physical and chemical air indicators. It does not identify bacteria or viruses.
Airlytics
Measure hospital indoor air quality room by room.
Airlytics keeps every Flair reading. As a result, your team sees what changed, when it changed and whether it crossed a limit. PM2.5 colors follow the U.S. EPA Air Quality Index.
- Health Index88Good
- PM2.511µg/m³Moderate
- CO₂820ppmBelow limit
- TVOC190ppbNo alert
- Humidity41%No alert
- Temperature72°FNo alert
- Good
- Moderate
- Unhealthy for sensitive groups
- Unhealthy
- Very unhealthy
- 9:02 am CO₂ above your 1,000 ppm limit. Back under at 9:30 am.
- 9:05 am PM2.5 in the orange AQI range. Back to yellow at 10:15 am.
Alerts
Set a limit for any reading. Airlytics emails your team when a reading crosses it.
History
Compare rooms, floors and time periods.
Reports
Export PDF, Excel or image reports for committee reviews.
Lobby View
Show live air data on a screen in a waiting area.
Health Index
Air data. Human meaning.
The Health Index is calculated environmental guidance. It turns Flair readings into an overall score and six well-being views, so your teams share one way to discuss hospital indoor air quality.
Dr. Stephanie Taylor, ThinkLite Air’s Chief Medical Officer, helped develop it. However, the Health Index is not a diagnosis or an individual health assessment.
Example scores The scores start low and rise as the room's air improves. Colors follow the Health Index scale in Airlytics.
Why humidity matters for hospital indoor air quality.
Dr. Taylor’s research in hospital environments reported an association between indoor relative humidity below 40% and patient infections. That is a correlation, not proof of cause. Flair tracks relative humidity in every room it monitors, so your team can see where it drifts.
Staff health
Look after the air your staff share.
Every sick call needs coverage, and overtime, agency staff and travel nurses all cost more than a regular shift. Meanwhile, break rooms, nurse stations, locker rooms and conference rooms are shared air your facility team can manage.
ICON cleans the shared air
Place ICON where staff gather and take breaks. It runs continuously and lowers one route of exposure.
Flair shows how each room is doing
CO₂ shows how well a room is ventilated for the people in it. Particle counts show what is being removed.
Airlytics flags problem rooms
Alerts and history show which rooms drift and when, so your team can act early.
Measuring the effect. Cleaner air reduces one exposure route. It does not guarantee fewer sick days. Instead, compare Airlytics data with your own absence and staffing records over time, and treat any link as a signal to investigate, not proof of cause.
HVAC energy
Ventilate to need. Never below the minimum.
Hospitals ventilate around the clock, often on fixed schedules. Instead, demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) links hospital indoor air quality to how much air each space actually needs.
Swipe sideways to see the whole room.
Above the minimum. The BMS adds air as people arrive.
Flair supplies the data. Your BMS controls the equipment.
- BACnet/IP
- BACnet MS/TP
- Modbus TCP/IP
- Modbus RTU
- MQTT
- REST API
Options depend on configuration and project.
1. Flair measures
Flair acts as the telemetry sensor. It sends real-time CO₂ readings to your BMS over BACnet, Modbus, MQTT or REST API.
2. Your BMS decides
Your BMS compares those readings to its setpoints and works out the airflow each space needs.
3. Your BMS acts
When fewer people are present, it turns dampers back toward the required minimum, never below it.
ASHRAE 170 comes first.
ASHRAE 170 sets the minimum air changes per hour (ACH) and pressure relationships for patient-care spaces. DCV works above those minimums. It does not override them.
- Occupied clinical spaces: airflow never drops below the required ACH or pressure relationship.
- Unoccupied rooms: where ASHRAE 170 allows it, air changes can be reduced while a room is empty. The pressure relationship must hold, and full minimums return when the room is occupied.
- Non-clinical spaces: offices and conference rooms are typically designed to ASHRAE 62.1, which allows DCV.
Where the savings come from.
Less air moved and conditioned means less fan, heating and cooling energy. However, how much you save depends on your building, climate, occupancy and current control sequences.
Your engineer of record and infection-prevention team set the limits. Flair data helps you run inside them and keep a record.
For engineers
Hospital indoor air quality monitoring details.
Measurements, connections and models for your engineering and controls team.
- CO₂: ppm, real-time, the main input for DCV
- Particle mass: PM0.1, PM0.3, PM0.5, PM1.0, PM2.5, PM5.0, PM10 (µg/m³)
- Particle count: PC0.1, PC0.3, PC0.5, PC1.0, PC2.5, PC5.0, PC10 (#/ft³)
- Other gases: TVOC in parts per billion; configurable CO, O₃, NO₂, HCHO and others
- Environment: temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, dew point
- BMS and data: BACnet/IP, BACnet MS/TP, Modbus TCP/IP, Modbus RTU, MQTT, REST API
- Connectivity: WiFi, Ethernet, PoE, optional 4G LTE
- Accreditation: RESET Air Accredited Monitor, Commercial Grade B
- Models: room-mounted Flair 2 and In-Duct Flair. Sensors depend on the configuration ordered.
- Stages: activated carbon pre-filter, enclosed UV-C / UV-A / PCO chamber, ULPA filters
- Filtration: ULPA, particles as small as 0.1 µm
- Airflow: 290 CFM at 20% fan (40.3 dB) up to 879 CFM at 100% fan (65.9 dB)
- Finishes: light wood, dark wood, gray and white
- Placement: waiting areas, nurse stations, staff break rooms and other shared spaces. Your infection-prevention team decides final placement.
Proven at scale
From academic medical centers to national health systems.
Healthcare networks we have worked with.
Ascension
40+ hospitals
University of Rochester Medical Center
Academic medical center
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Academic medical center
HCA Healthcare
Health system
Before you plan
Hospital indoor air quality questions.
Healthcare case studies
Proven Outcomes at Enterprise Scale
We engineered ThinkLite Air to meet the strict demands of clinical environments without inflating facility energy costs. Review the deployment architecture, particle and air-quality data, and HVAC energy outcomes from our work with top healthcare networks.
Plan your first step
Plan your hospital indoor air quality program.
Tell us which spaces need attention. Then we’ll help you choose the monitoring, purification and BMS connections that fit.
- Pick priority spaces and what to measure in each.
- Review BMS connections and data needs.
- Explore purchase and CLAAS (Clean Air as a Service) options.
Prefer to talk? Call (617) 500-6689 or email inquiry@thinklite.com.
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Explore the ThinkLite Air system
Measure, understand and improve hospital indoor air quality.
Every product page goes deeper into specifications and options.
Measure your air
Flair IAQ
Real-time CO₂, particles, gases, temperature and humidity.
Sources: CDC Emerging Infections Program HAI point-prevalence survey of 2023 data, New England Journal of Medicine, July 2026. Cole E.C., Cook C.E., American Journal of Infection Control, 1998. U.S. EPA Air Quality Index for PM2.5, 2024 breakpoints.
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