The Nevoa team ventured to Nashville for APIC26 and came back with more than a few new cowboy hats.
This year’s APIC event brought infection preventionists and healthcare leaders from around the world into one room to compare notes, learn about the newest technology, and share what’s actually working back at their own hospitals.
Our team hosted a booth where we showed off our rapid, automated fogging solutions and talked with IPs about their biggest challenges, which included everything from aging equipment to emerging pathogens.
Below, Nevoa’s own Martin McGonagle, CEO, and Peter Hoff, Vice President of Sales, break down their key insights and takeaways from APIC 2026.
Major Shifts in the UV-C Market
The conversations we had at APIC pointed to something bigger than fatigue with a technology. Three forces are converging on UV disinfection at the same time, and together they’re forcing a decision that most facilities didn’t plan for.
COVID-Era Fleets Are Aging Out
We talked with IPs from several facilities that purchased UV disinfection units years ago, many of them during the funding rush around COVID. Now those units are five to seven years old and nearing the end of their lifespans. With aging equipment comes a host of challenges. Service is getting harder to come by, and vendors are pushing costly upgrades. So facilities are already staring down a rebuy.
“Our leadership doesn’t believe it’s really working,” one customer told Peter. “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze at this point for us to continue.”
Changing Regulatory Environment
In September 2023, FDA granted Xenex’s LightStrike+ a De Novo classification, creating a new Class II device category for whole-room microbial reduction devices (21 CFR 880.6510). Surfacide’s Helios+ later became the first such device to earn 510(k) clearance. The practical consequence: a whole-room device making microbial reduction claims in the presence of medical equipment now needs FDA authorization to be legally marketed in the U.S. Most of the units currently sitting in hospital hallways were bought before that standard existed.
And the FDA is enforcing. In May 2026, the agency issued a warning letter to a UV device manufacturer, stating the firm had provided no evidence supporting the safety and effectiveness of its devices for disinfecting healthcare environments, and that FDA was unaware of any literature supporting the company’s claims. The letter also flagged risks the agency considers unresolved: UV radiation exposure to staff and patients, and the potential for UV to compromise the material integrity of other medical devices in the room.
Evaporating Leadership Conviction
Some of the strongest feedback came from a large hospital system whose leadership had already made up their minds. An IP shared with Martin that their C-suite had no interest in moving forward with UV disinfection. “Leadership told them, ‘Don’t even talk to me about UV. I don’t want to hear about it,’” Martin said.
If your UV fleet is at the end of its life, the question in front of you is not “which UV unit do we buy next?” It’s a full reevaluation.
UV-C soothed a lot of concerns during the pandemic. But the underlying need never went away. Hospitals still need whole-room pathogen reduction that is fast, safe for the staff running it, safe for the equipment in the room, and backed by evidence that holds up to scrutiny. That’s the bar now, and it’s a good thing for patients and staff alike.
C. Auris Remains a Top Concern
C. auris was once again one of the most talked-about topics at APIC, coming up in conversation after conversation. It’s easy to see why. The CDC’s newest surveillance data show clinical C. auris cases more than doubled in just two years, climbing from roughly 2,900 in 2022 to over 6,300 in 2024. Even as the year-over-year growth rates have slowed, these numbers remain a major concern, especially with the high mortality rate in mind. Nearly one-third of hospitalized patients with a C. auris infection don’t survive it.
Alongside its high mortality rate, C. auris also challenges traditional outbreak control protocols. It’s frequently resistant to standard antifungal treatment, difficult to identify with routine lab methods, and it can outlast several disinfectants commonly used in healthcare settings.
As we continue to fight back against growing C. auris cases, the CDC recommends environmental cleaning as a core part of prevention. Its recommendations also include hand hygiene, screening high-risk patients, and communicating a patient’s status when they transfer between facilities.
Hospitals Still Need a Fast, Handheld Option
Many hospitals rely on handheld electrostatic sprayers for quick, between-case disinfection. After the discontinuation of the Clorox 360 electrostatic sprayer, many facilities have been stuck with aging equipment, ineffective dupes, or no handheld disinfection methods at all.
What these IP teams want is simple. They need something fast, easy for staff to use, and dependable in moments when there’s no time for a longer process, but they’re limited by just how few options exist for this kind of need.
That’s where Nevoa’s handheld Stratus fogger comes in. It gives facility teams a rapid, reliable option for the moments when speed matters most. It also works hand-in-hand with Nimbus, fogging the same Microburst disinfecting solution no matter the situation. This simplifies the vendor approval process, training, and inventory management.
Many facilities we spoke with aren’t choosing just one disinfection method. They often use two different tools for two different situations, and that’s exactly what sets Nevoa apart. “We have an option that if you only have one or two minutes, you can use it. Nobody else has that,” Peter said.
It was another insightful year at APIC, and we’re already counting down to next year. If your facility is reconsidering its current environmental surface disinfection approach, we’d love to talk.
Reach out to us today to learn more.