Beyond clean air: how SafeAir Is turning indoor environments Into healthcare intelligence

Rosalind Chua, Chief Commercial Officer and co-founder at Vidal Solution, spoke to HealthTechAsia following Smart Health Asia about how the company’s SafeAir platform is bringing continuous, zone-level air quality monitoring into hospitals and eldercare facilities across Singapore.

What’s the most concrete outcome a client has seen so far — a compliance result, a cost saving, or a health outcome?

One of our clearest outcomes so far came from a healthcare deployment at St Luke’s Hospital in Singapore. SafeAir was used to monitor and interpret indoor air quality across selected clinical and common areas. The data showed persistent high relative humidity, in some zones above 90%, and elevated particulate levels.

After targeted remediation using dehumidification and air cleaning, those areas improved significantly. Relative humidity was brought down to a healthier operating range of around 50–60%, and PM2.5 levels were reduced to below 15 µg/m³ in the monitored areas.

For the client, the concrete value was not just the environmental improvement. It gave the facilities team evidence to identify hidden risks, act on them, and document the improvement. In healthcare, that matters because issues like mould risk, particulate exposure and poor ventilation are often invisible until they become complaints, maintenance problems, or infection-control concerns.

We are careful not to claim direct clinical outcomes yet, such as reduced infection rates or faster recovery, because that requires a formal clinical validation study. But we can already point to measurable improvements in environmental risk factors that are highly relevant to patient, staff and facility wellbeing.

DCV and DCP both sound automated — ventilation and purification adjusting themselves based on conditions. Is someone actively monitoring the system, or does it run unattended once set up?

SafeAir is designed to support both modes.

For routine operation, the system can run automatically based on pre-set environmental rules and thresholds. For example, if CO₂ rises due to occupancy, demand-controlled ventilation can increase fresh air supply. If particulate levels rise, demand-controlled purification can increase filtration or air-cleaning intensity.

However, in healthcare and care environments, we do not position this as a “set and forget” system. There is still human oversight. Facilities teams can monitor dashboards, receive alerts, review trends, and decide on corrective actions. SafeAir’s role is to reduce manual guesswork by turning live environmental data into clear operational intelligence.

So the best way to describe it is: SafeAir automates routine environmental responses where appropriate, but keeps the facilities or operations team in the loop for governance, escalation and accountability.

How does SafeAir’s reporting hold up against existing infection control and compliance frameworks in hospitals? Is this additive evidence, or does it risk duplicating what they already track?

SafeAir is intended to be additive evidence, not a replacement for existing infection-control or compliance frameworks.

Hospitals already track many important things: cleaning protocols, air-change requirements, maintenance records, infection surveillance, incident reports and audit documentation. What is often missing is continuous, zone-level environmental evidence showing what is happening in real time between inspections or manual checks.

SafeAir adds that missing layer. It provides continuous monitoring of parameters such as CO₂, PM2.5, humidity, temperature, VOCs and formaldehyde, then translates those readings into risk insights such as airborne transmission risk, mould risk, haze risk and compliance deviation.

This helps infection control and facilities teams speak from the same evidence base. For example, if a ward has elevated CO₂ during peak occupancy, or a treatment area has persistent humidity above a safe range, SafeAir can document when it happened, how long it lasted, and whether the corrective action worked.

So we see SafeAir as a supporting evidence and assurance layer. It strengthens existing frameworks rather than duplicating them.

Who inside a hospital or care facility is the actual buyer or champion — infection control, facilities management, or clinical leadership?

There is usually more than one champion because indoor air quality sits across multiple departments.

Facilities management is often the most immediate operational champion because they are responsible for ventilation, filtration, humidity control, maintenance and energy use. They need actionable data to know where the problems are and what to fix.

Infection control is a strong clinical champion because air quality affects airborne transmission risk, isolation practices, patient safety and outbreak preparedness. They may not own the HVAC system, but they care deeply about the risk environment.

Clinical leadership and nursing leadership become important when the conversation moves from “building performance” to “patient and staff wellbeing”. They are interested in how environmental conditions affect comfort, recovery, respiratory risk, staff fatigue and overall care quality.

The strongest projects usually happen when facilities, infection control and clinical leadership come together. SafeAir is valuable because it gives these groups a common language.

In healthcare specifically, who’s actually writing the cheque — facilities, infection control, or hospital leadership?

In most cases, the budget is likely to come from facilities, operations, sustainability, innovation, or hospital leadership — depending on how the project is framed.

If the project is framed as monitoring, compliance, HVAC optimisation or remediation, facilities and operations are usually the budget owners.

If it is framed as infection prevention, patient safety, staff wellbeing or innovation, then infection control, nursing leadership, clinical innovation teams or senior management may help sponsor the project, even if they are not the final budget holder.

For larger deployments, hospital leadership usually needs to be involved because the value crosses departments. SafeAir is not just an equipment purchase. It is a risk intelligence and assurance system. That means the ROI can include compliance readiness, operational efficiency, energy optimisation, reduced complaints, reduced maintenance blind spots, and better patient and staff environments.

Are you planning for regional expansion, for example in Southeast Asia or the Arabian Gulf?

Yes, Southeast Asia and Australia are both on our expansion radar, but Australia is our more immediate next market.

Our priority is to first deepen our validation and reference projects in Singapore, especially in healthcare and eldercare. From there, Australia is a natural next step because of its mature healthcare and aged-care sectors, strong compliance expectations, and growing focus on indoor environmental quality.

Southeast Asia is also highly relevant to us because many markets face similar indoor air challenges — humidity, haze, heat, dense occupancy and rising expectations around healthcare quality. However, our approach is to expand in a disciplined way. We do not want to enter too many markets at once before building strong clinical, operational and commercial evidence.

So the near-term path is Singapore first, Australia next, and Southeast Asia as part of our broader regional expansion roadmap.

As for the Arabian Gulf, it is will be our long-term roadmap.

Can the system account for individual patient conditions, such as someone with pulmonary disease who needs tighter oxygen or particulate thresholds than a general ward setting?

Today, SafeAir is primarily designed at the zone, room and facility level. It monitors the environmental conditions of a space, not the clinical condition of an individual patient.

That said, the system can support different environmental profiles for different types of spaces. For example, a general office, a ward, a rehabilitation area, a treatment room, an eldercare activity room and a high-risk respiratory zone should not necessarily use the same risk thresholds or operating priorities.

For patients with pulmonary disease or other respiratory vulnerabilities, SafeAir can help define tighter environmental targets for the spaces they occupy — for example, lower particulate exposure, better humidity control, and stronger ventilation assurance.

But we would be careful to say that SafeAir does not yet personalise air quality automatically for an individual patient based on their diagnosis. That would require deeper clinical integration, governance and validation.

Our current approach is to create safer, more responsive environmental conditions for defined healthcare zones and populations.

Does SafeAir take in any patient clinical or health data directly and adjust air quality automatically in response? Or is the environmental side kept separate from clinical systems?

At this stage, SafeAir keeps the environmental side separate from patient clinical systems.

We do not currently ingest patient-identifiable clinical data from bedside monitors, electronic medical records or medical devices.

That is intentional. It keeps the deployment simpler, protects patient privacy, and allows hospitals to adopt SafeAir as a facilities, infection-control and environmental assurance platform without creating unnecessary clinical data risk.

SafeAir focuses on environmental parameters such as CO₂, PM2.5, humidity, temperature, VOCs, formaldehyde and occupancy.

These are then translated into operational risk insights.

In the future, there may be opportunities to integrate with clinical workflows at an aggregated or non-identifiable level, for example to support research on patient recovery environments. But that would need to be done carefully with clinical governance, ethics approval and hospital data policies.

Can SafeAir extend to remote or home settings, where a hospital or care provider is monitoring a patient’s home air quality rather than its own building?

Yes, technically SafeAir can be extended into remote or home settings. The same principles apply: sensing, interpretation, alerts, reporting and targeted action.

This could be relevant for home-based care, elderly care, chronic respiratory patients, post-discharge monitoring, or ageing-in-place programmes. For example, a care provider may want to know whether an elderly person is living in a home with high humidity, mould risk, haze exposure, poor ventilation or persistent heat stress.

However, the operating model is different from a hospital. In a hospital, there is a facilities team on site. In the home, the response may involve the patient, caregiver, family member, community nurse, property manager or care provider.

So while the technology can extend to homes, the service model and escalation workflow must be designed carefully.

If that’s possible, who’s the responsible party when something is flagged — the hospital, the patient, a caregiver — and how does escalation work outside a staffed facility?

Outside a staffed facility, responsibility has to be clearly defined before deployment.

For home-based care, SafeAir should not simply generate alerts without a response pathway. The escalation model needs to identify who receives the alert, what level of severity requires action, and who is accountable for follow-up.

A possible model would be three levels. Low-level alerts can go to the patient or caregiver with simple guidance, such as ventilate the room, turn on purification, or check for sources of moisture. Moderate alerts can go to a care coordinator or community care team for follow-up. High-risk or persistent alerts can be escalated to a healthcare provider, facility partner, or family member depending on the care model.

The key is that SafeAir provides the environmental intelligence, but the care organisation must define the response protocol. This is especially important if the user is vulnerable, elderly or medically at risk.

Is SafeAir built for fixed installations only, or could it work in mobile clinical environments such as ambulances or patient transport?

SafeAir is currently focused on fixed facilities such as hospitals, eldercare centres, clinics, schools and commercial buildings.

However, the underlying concept can be adapted to mobile environments. Ambulances, air ambulances and patient transport vehicles also have air-quality risks: small cabin volume, close proximity, variable ventilation, infection risk, cleaning cycles, particulate exposure and changing outdoor conditions.

The technical requirements would be different. A mobile version would need rugged sensors, fast response times, vehicle power integration, connectivity options, and a different alert logic because conditions change quickly.

So it is not our primary commercial focus today, but it is a possible future extension — especially for infection-control assurance and transport safety.

You also list a Cognition Index alongside the health and infection-related ones. In a healthcare setting specifically, who is that aimed at — patients, staff, or both — and what is it actually measuring?

In healthcare, the Cognition Index is mainly aimed at staff performance and occupant wellbeing, although it may also be relevant to patients and elderly occupants in certain settings.

It is not measuring cognition directly through a medical test. Instead, it uses environmental proxies that have been associated in research with cognitive performance, alertness and comfort — especially CO₂, ventilation adequacy, temperature and other indoor air-quality factors.

For healthcare workers, this matters because hospitals are high-pressure environments. Poor ventilation, high CO₂, uncomfortable temperatures or poor air quality can contribute to fatigue, discomfort and reduced focus.

For eldercare or rehabilitation settings, cognition and comfort are also relevant because residents and patients may be more sensitive to environmental stressors.

So the Cognition Index should be understood as an environmental performance indicator, not a clinical diagnostic tool. It helps identify whether a space is likely to support alertness, comfort and better human performance.

Looking ahead, are there plans to evolve SafeAir itself, or to launch new solutions beyond it over the next few years?

Yes. We see SafeAir evolving from an indoor air-quality monitoring platform into a broader environmental health intelligence and assurance system.

The first stage is real-time monitoring and reporting. The second stage is risk interpretation — turning environmental data into insights such as airborne transmission risk, mould risk, haze risk, formaldehyde risk, cognition risk and compliance deviation.

The third stage is automated protection, where ventilation and purification respond to changing conditions. The fourth stage is assurance, where hospitals and building owners can document that their spaces are being continuously managed to support health, safety and compliance.

Over the next few years, we plan to strengthen SafeAir in three areas.

First, predictive intelligence: identifying risks before they become problems, such as rising mould risk, poor ventilation during peak occupancy, or haze-related particulate exposure.

Second, deeper integration with building systems: enabling SafeAir to become the translation layer between health standards, environmental risk and building action.

Third, sector-specific solutions: healthcare, eldercare, schools and workplaces each need different dashboards, thresholds, reports and workflows.

So the vision is not just to monitor air. It is to help buildings actively protect the people inside them.