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Megan Walker: Hello, and a very big, warm welcome to the Healthcare Thought Leaders Show. I'm Megan Walker, and today our special guest is Associate Professor Lotti Tajouri. I had the absolute pleasure of... well, it was almost stalking, Lotti, wasn't it? About five years ago, I came across an article in The Australian, and I thought, "This man is doing some really interesting work." I've been following him since, and we're back to have part two of the conversation.

By way of background, Lotti is a molecular biologist and researcher at Bond University, and his work spans infectious disease, public health, infection prevention, global biosecurity, and also food safety, as we've just been discussing.

One absolutely fascinating area of Lotti's research explores something most of us carry everywhere, in our pockets and bags, by the side of the bed, on us all the time: our mobile phone, and the role this device can play as a frequently overlooked third hand in infection control. Earlier this year, Lotti took this message to TEDxBrisbane, and I thoroughly encourage all of you to watch his TED Talk. It is outstanding, and his topic is Your Phone is Your Third Hand. Huge congratulations, Lotti, on having your talk picked up as a TED Editor's Pick in New York, which is a very rare and highly esteemed achievement. So well done.

Today, we're looking forward to exploring what's been happening with Lotti's research since we last spoke, how he's translating that research into practical solutions, and, of big interest to a lot of people who listen to this podcast, how Lotti is using his research work to step into thought leadership and lean on these promotional opportunities to get the word out there.

So Lotti, a big warm welcome to the Healthcare Thought Leaders Show.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Good morning, Megan.

Megan Walker: Great to have you here. When we last spoke, you were raising awareness of mobile phones as the frequently overlooked third hand. What has your research revealed over the last, gosh, four or five years since we last spoke?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Look, quite a lot indeed. We've been discovering, for example, that mobile phones are used in toilets. And the matter of the fact is, it's a big concern for the public to start with, but also for professionals, because doing that leads to lots and lots of faecal-derived contamination on those mobile phones.

And you said it all. Mobile phones are mini computers. We use them all the time, professionally as well. In healthcare settings, medical staff use them. Food handlers use them. Passengers on planes, travellers going from one part of the globe to the other, bring mobile phones that are heavily contaminated with viruses, bacteria, fungi and even, by the way, parasites. We've been digging into all of this.

And frankly, as you mentioned, raising awareness has been my cup of tea for the last few years, and I'm still in that process. You mentioned TEDxBrisbane. There was an amazing recognition from the headquarters of TED in New York, and it's quite a high honour, I have to say, because the likelihood of being picked is 0.07 percent. So you can understand how happy our team is to raise awareness.

But there are many problems. To give you a very good example for your question, we very recently published, about a month ago, a scientific paper with the title the Phonome. The Phonome is, if you want, the microbiome present on phones. We looked at 95 mobile phones from healthcare settings, and we identified a little over 17,000 microorganisms.

We wrote this paper not only to say how heavily contaminated mobile phones are, but to look at the most important microorganisms, the ones labelled as the top 10 killer pathogens in healthcare settings. Those 10 bacteria had a huge number of antibiotic-resistant genes in their genome. On top of that, they had a huge number of virulence factor genes, which are factors that enhance pathology. So, so to speak, those 10 microorganisms are indeed top killers. And we found in this study of 95 mobile phones an average of almost four of those 10 top killers per mobile phone.

Megan Walker: Oh, wow.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: So this is just unbelievable. Healthcare workers have mobile phones in their hands, and they don't really know what to do to get rid of those microorganisms to start with. They are carrying Trojan horses, mobile Petri dishes, literally speaking, in settings that are incredibly important to maintaining healthcare. That can lead to healthcare-associated infections, and those, I can tell you, Megan, are a huge burden in terms of cost. Every year we spend hundreds of millions of dollars. To give you an example, in Europe alone, the cost of healthcare-associated infections is around €23 billion. It's an unbelievably high cost attributed to healthcare-associated infections.

Megan Walker: Wow. In your TED Talk, I was blown away when you were talking about people attending a conference here in Australia whose phones were tested. You do better justice to it than I will, so everyone must listen to that. People coming in from overseas had these horrendous pathogens on their phones.

But Lotti, what always strikes me is when you first really got the shock of this: clinicians in surgical settings, perhaps case conferencing, talking to other doctors and surgeons on phones, and then the same hands going into open wounds in a surgical environment.

Can you give us a couple of other shocking examples of why this is such a big deal? People might be thinking, "Oh yes, we know that's dirty, but so are surfaces, so are light switches." Ram it home for us how serious this issue is. Talk about the most vulnerable risks around the third hand.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Okay. I can give you an example, back in the hospitals. I remember a study with 26 mobile phones that were swabbed in a paediatric intensive care unit as well as a paediatric emergency department. We found, again, thousands of microorganisms. And one of the things that really struck me the most, and remember we're talking about a paediatric intensive care unit, is that we found Streptococcus pneumoniae on more than 80 percent of those mobile phones. We found Clostridium difficile, one of the most notorious superbugs, responsible for a high share of healthcare-associated infections, on up to 20 percent.

Megan Walker: Wow.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: So one phone in five had this deadly bug in a paediatric intensive care unit. We even found, and I wasn't going to say the name but I will, gonorrhoea on a phone in a paediatric emergency department.

So it really says two things. One is that you have very important, sensitive areas where we need to be really good at infection control and prevention. If we talk the talk of infection control and prevention, we need to walk the walk, and we need to run the run. That is what we need to do to protect vulnerable patients, and in that case they were neonatal, babies. So it's very important that we do so.

Secondly, and I will bounce back to travel later on, what is very important for medical staff to understand is that what is on the phones is not just a few microorganisms. It is a complex ecosystem of different types of microorganisms. Many of them can be normal biota, which means they are not pathogenic. However, if you are immunocompromised, any microorganism you get infected with in a healthcare setting becomes a big problem for you. And on those platforms, there are many microorganisms that are pathogenic.

So the question is not, "Are we surrounded by microorganisms, and should we improve our immunity?" We do that every day. Right now, at your desk, you are literally being bombarded by microorganisms. Your innate immunity as well as your adaptive immunity is geared up and will do the right thing to keep you healthy, and it's good to be primed by exposure to those microorganisms. That's fine. There is no debate on that.

The debate is whether we can have mobile phones that are literally breeding grounds for microorganisms of all sorts, including superbugs, in your pocket and in your hands. When you are a medical doctor on duty, you are going to touch patients.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And you are going to touch different types of instruments. You are going to spread, literally speaking, those microorganisms, because we know perfectly well from the literature that microorganisms transfer from mobile phones to the hands. And we know that hands touch everything and anything.

Medical staff absolutely understand the importance of hand hygiene, but mobile phones negate hand washing. You can wash your hands perfectly well, and the very moment you touch your phone, you recontaminate them. That is a huge, massive issue for two reasons. The first is the spread of microorganisms and, unfortunately, infecting vulnerable individuals, which is obviously very sad. The second comes back to what I said: if mobile phones negate hand washing, then the water, the soap, the towel and the time spent washing your hands are all wasted.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: When you have hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers who don't know that mobile phones are a Trojan horse for microbial contamination, and they wash their hands and then touch their phone again, guess what? We are wasting tons and tons of water, tons and tons of soap, as well as towels, and we're paying to generate waste.

Megan Walker: The time and money lost on something that is redundant, because as soon as they touch that phone, they may as well not have washed their hands in the first place. And it's their own health as well as the risk for patients and for everyone working in those environments. It's a huge issue, isn't it? It's massive.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: You're right, Megan. I cannot be more serious than that. You mentioned that medical staff can impair their own health, and you're right. Because on top of that, you know what? When they finish their shift, having used their mobile phones the whole time, what do they do? They go home.

Do they sanitise their mobile phones? Are they putting their kids at risk if they're exposed to those phones? When we invite people over, I see kids going to mum's or dad's mobile phone, and sometimes even licking them. Bring that back to a medical doctor who works in surroundings with a massive, high density of superbugs. We know that. Hospitals are really the accommodation for superbugs. This is the reason why infection control and prevention is so active.

But those mobile phones, those mobile Petri dishes, what will happen? Not only do they spread microorganisms from ward to ward, but at the end of the shift, they go out into the community.

Megan Walker: Wow.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And the community suffers, and we don't know about it because we don't quantify it. Our research team is incredibly motivated to raise the concern and say to politicians, "We should do something. Let's do the right intervention. Solutions exist."

For example, we're looking at an ultraviolet-C phone sanitiser that is incredibly germicidal, meaning it kills germs in less than 10 seconds. It is hands-free, it's automatic, and you can have medical doctors or nurses in hospitals or clinics washing their hands normally and slipping their mobile phones into this UVC phone sanitiser. And guess what? The two biological hands are clean, and the third hand, as you mentioned before, is clean as well.

Megan Walker: As a layperson, I'm picturing a hand washing station, or anywhere you have hand sanitisers, like airports, chemists, hospitals obviously, food environments, where this sits alongside it. Can you tell us your vision for how that looks and works? Paint the picture.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Look, the vision, Megan, and I'm going to be a little bit repetitive here, is that we have billions of mobile phones in circulation. For anybody with common sense, it's a no-brainer that those devices are incredibly high touch.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: We touch things with our fingers, which is completely human behaviour. We touch everything and anything. When you touch your mobile phone, you transfer microorganisms onto that platform, and that mobile phone is a breeding ground, as I said before, because there is temperature control. We spit on it with very little droplets of saliva, which gives it moisture. We even eat with our mobile phones, so whatever we eat ends up on the surface of the phone, which is, by the way, a free buffet for microorganisms to thrive.

And when I talk about thriving, I'm talking about a very sophisticated ability to grow on those surfaces. We find, for example, biofilm formation. A biofilm is an organised ability of microorganisms to colonise and firmly adhere to a surface. We find that.

So not only are mobile phones in circulation in their billions, not only are they in our hands and heavily, dynamically contaminated with microorganisms, including superbugs, but here is the problem: if we don't address it, we are letting those microorganisms not only thrive but spread, because we move. We travel, for example.

Back in 2023, I went to a medical conference in Sydney and swabbed 20 mobile phones from travellers freshly arrived from overseas. And you know what I found? Not only microorganisms of public health importance for disease, but also plant and animal pathogens.

Megan Walker: Oh, biohazard.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And what does it mean? It means that mobile phones that are never, ever sanitised, the Trojan horses, remember, harbour all those microorganisms. Those microorganisms are able to survive on mobile phones without a single problem. E. coli can stay for weeks. You can have, for example, the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: We published that, by the way. 45 percent of mobile phones tested for coronavirus during the crisis harboured SARS-CoV-2. So with international travel, those microorganisms will be on the mobile phones, end up at whatever destination, and spread. Look at how fast SARS-CoV-2 spread. It was a headache for us to contain it, and mobile phones may have been used as a Trojan horse for those viruses to spread.

There are studies showing it can survive on a mobile phone for 28 days. Do you think a 15-hour long-haul flight will get rid of that coronavirus?

Megan Walker: No.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And this is the equation: billions of mobile phones, a huge amount of viable microbial contamination. We are able to culture them, to grow them out of the mobile phone. That means that in terms of biosecurity, with the plant pathogens and animal pathogens I talked about, at our borders, if we really want to talk the talk, walk the walk and run the run, we should implement devices that sanitise mobile phones.

I don't believe in relying on every single person doing the right thing. There are many people who will do it, and many who will not. So an automatic, technology-driven solution is the way to go for compliance. If you have that in an airport, for example, and people slip their mobile phone in, 10 seconds, zap, you don't slow down the flow of people, so the airport is happy. And you have sanitised billions of phones in a year when you look at the whole globe. Billions of travellers, preventing the spread of these microorganisms.

You also touched on how we could implement those UVC devices. It could be in the airport at the security check, where we ask you to put down some of your belongings. You slip your mobile phone in there, with a battery of those UVC units available, the same way we UVC the tray where you put your belongings.

And the same thing for food handling. The food handlers, I cannot believe it, Megan. I'm sorry, because this is my research, so I get really paranoid about it, but every time I go to a food court, I am literally worried.

Megan Walker: Yeah.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Because I know that in the community, and we did a survey of young people, around 80 percent use mobile phones in the toilet. So when you're in a food court and you see people handling food with gloves on, but at the same time using their mobile phones, you question yourself: what did that person do one minute ago on their break? Did they use their mobile phone in the toilet?

And I'm going to tell you the scientific output of this. We looked at what types of microbes come off mobile phones when they are swabbed, and we found a massive amount of bacteria that cause foodborne illness: Bacillus cereus, Salmonella, E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and even Campylobacter species, all on mobile phones.

So if you are listening, and you say, "Oh, it's okay to be sick once in a while," well, I can tell you, if you have Bacillus cereus, get ready for emetic, vomiting episodes. If you are happy to have diarrhoea after that, okay. I personally would not.

And this is globally a huge issue for food safety. Megan, how many times do you hear in the media about an outbreak, or that a food has to be pulled from supermarket shelves because of E. coli or some type of virus? It's a huge problem. The same goes for the cruise industry. I'm trying to get the cruise industry to let me work with them, because they do buffets, for example.

When you go on a cruise, everyone goes to the buffet. You just need one person to embark with a very contagious foodborne bacterium. That person does whatever they need to do in the toilet, number one, number two, washes their hands, but has used their mobile phone in the toilet.

Megan Walker: Yuck.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: They go to the buffet on level 14 and touch everything and anything, knowing that the mobile phone has cross-contaminated his or her fingers all over again. That is called an outbreak. We hear about it all the time: E. coli, norovirus, rotavirus, so many bugs that lead to foodborne illness.

Let us prove to you that we can probably break down those outbreaks, which would save you hundreds of millions of dollars, just by implementing devices that are super robust and cost probably around 2,000 each, which is nothing, and getting everyone to sanitise their hands and also slip their mobile phones in, and then see if the outbreaks drop. There are so many examples. Aged care facilities, the same.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Kindies, the same.

Megan Walker: Oh, Petri dishes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Literal Petri dishes. So I am calling on the audience to support this research. Some people tend to think, "Oh, it's just a mobile phone. Our best friend. I can call my friends, I can call my family, I can use social media." People don't see a problem with it. We see a strong problem, because it's a biological extension, literally speaking, of our hands.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And if we don't do anything, if we keep that kind of attitude, it has a huge cost. In hospitals to start with, for vulnerable individuals. A huge cost in wasted water, because mobile phones negate hand washing. A huge cost for the individual, who can end up with foodborne illness. A huge cost for the food industry, where food safety is literally negated because people touch food with their hands. A huge problem on cruises, where outbreaks always occur and are probably associated with the fact that every single one of us has a mobile phone. Even kids have mobile phones now.

All of this is a problem, and I'll finish my sentence here: the same goes for biosecurity. Are we taking it seriously? We have plant and animal pathogens coming onto our shores, and that is a risk to the agriculture of this country, which is worth billions of dollars.

When you go to the airport, they ask you, "Do you have an apple? Ditch it." Amazing. That is good. To protect biosecurity, thumbs up. We say, "We don't want your apple here," because there might be a parasite in that apple or some microorganism that could lead to a biosecurity issue in the country. Well, it's the same thing for mobile phones.

Megan Walker: Yeah, it's the apple.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Mobile phones have been biological magnets that over time have accumulated a huge burden of microorganisms of all sorts: fungi, protozoa, viruses, bacteria. They are all there. Should we do something about it? My thinking is a big yes.

Megan Walker: Yes, please.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Let's act. Let's show that we are number one in biosecurity and that we take it seriously. Let's look at healthcare-associated infections. Are we facing a kind of hidden pandemic associated with superbug dissemination? Are superbugs not disseminating themselves through modern transport, where travellers' mobile phones come from endemic areas into non-endemic areas, let's say Australia, and we end up facing all those superbugs, all those undesirable microorganisms that have no place being here? Biosecurity should really be looking at that, and we call for it.

Megan Walker: Yeah, absolutely. And bringing it back to an individual who might think this is a bigger conversation than them: someone who has saved up for 12 months to go on that cruise, do they want to spend their entire cruise sitting on the toilet? This is real. It's affecting and infecting everyone. We see people getting sicker every year from colds and the spread of viruses and COVID, and we have a solution.

Tell me about the device you've been working on with the research partner you have overseas, and what can people who are listening do to help in that endeavour? What help do you need to make this solution a reality?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Okay. In terms of the ultraviolet-C phone sanitiser, we really looked at this particular device for a very simple reason. As I said, it's practical, it's fast, it's robust, and it's enclosed, which means it's safe. It uses UVC, which is light at a wavelength of around 260 nanometres, which microorganisms absolutely dislike. It breaks their genome, their DNA and RNA. And the dosage of UVC emitted by this particular device is incredibly effective. We've published that, by the way. We looked at the efficacy, because when we talk, we want to make sure we have the scientific evidence behind it.

When I say practical, I'll go a little further. We would like to see UVC used not only because it's fast and robust, but as a real solution in particular settings. In a hospital, a nurse or a medical doctor washes his or her hands, and hand washing takes around 20 to 30 seconds. They can slip their mobile phone in at the same time, and UVC phone sanitisation takes less than that. So all three hands are sanitised.

In terms of how we would like to see it happen, first we would like politicians, especially in health, to look at the effect with us. We're doing some studies right now in Brisbane, implementing an intervention with UVC phone sanitisation using this device, which, by the way, is manufactured in Toronto, Canada. I don't know if I can say the company, but I can if you want. It's called Glissner.

We would like the scientific community, especially infection control and prevention staff, and politicians in health, to really back us up. If mobile phones contribute to healthcare-associated infections, and I'm being very conservative here, because I believe they contribute to far more than this, let's say they contribute to 5 percent of healthcare-associated infections.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Megan, if that were the case, reducing it would save billions of dollars every year. Billions, if not trillions, globally. So it's worth looking at, because if this is the solution, it would be absolutely amazing. It would be good to have a hand sanitiser station alongside UVC phone sanitisation, and that might, as I said, bring down foodborne illnesses.

There was a very interesting statement out of the US that said if we were to reduce foodborne illnesses by 1 percent, it would save 700 million US dollars per year.

Megan Walker: Oh, wow.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: A decrease of 1 percent. So don't you think it's worth looking at?

Megan Walker: So easy.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: It is. It's a no-brainer. But it's very hard, Megan, to be heard. Us scientists, we love what we're doing, and you can probably hear the passion coming through me. But it is real. It is scientifically backed. And we have a solution. We want not only to demonstrate the problem but also to implement the solution, and we need support.

Megan Walker: Yes.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: We need people like you who will, for example, spread the TEDx talk, which explains the whole issue in lay terms, from biosecurity to public health to hospital issues. I explain all of that, and that raises awareness and brings more support towards us.

Megan Walker: Amazing. And people can also, if they're in a hospital setting, perhaps get in touch with you and your team about being another trial site or a device trial. But we want them to get in touch with you anyway, don't we?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Oh, Megan, yes. It's about access. I'll give you one of my little frustrations, though I understand it as well. I've been trying to gain access to airports, and it has been very hard. I understand. There are different airlines, and airports don't want people swabbing things. I really get that. But if you think about it in a more global way, if we succeed in our mission, it's a very beneficial outcome for airports. It's a very beneficial outcome for hospitals.

I'll give you another frustration. I tried to approach some food handling businesses, and I was politely told no. And the second problem we have, Megan, beyond access, is that it's incredibly hard to do research without funding. Incredibly hard.

And I'm not asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not at all. Support of a few thousand dollars would translate into assessing solutions and into publications that the scientific community can build on, growing towards a universal solution. To put down, literally speaking, superbug spread. To put down the microorganisms responsible for nosocomial disease and healthcare-associated infection. To reduce the likelihood of microorganisms causing biosecurity disasters. And to allow a better economy out of it, not only for the health of every single one of us, which is obviously great, but to help the economy blossom without disasters.

Megan Walker: Yes. Amazing. Let's switch hats completely for a second. We're going to get people to get in touch with you and your team. They're going to spread the word, pardon the pun. They're going to watch your TED Talk. They're going to get in touch if they have funds or opportunities to trial the UVC device alongside the hand sanitising station.

Now, flipping hats completely for a moment. A lot of people listening to this podcast will be so inspired by your passion, and they'll also be wondering how you've connected with the sorts of opportunities that are giving you the stage. I know it's incredibly hard work, and you're doing an amazing job of getting the word out there.

How, for instance, did you get your TED Talk, and what was involved? Tell us, if you don't mind, a bit of the behind the scenes: the courage it's taking, the confidence, and any skills you've had to acquire to step into a marketing role alongside the scientific background you have. Would you like to talk to that for a few moments?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Of course, of course. There is a lot in your question. So look, this opportunity arose because a colleague of mine had given a talk at TEDxBrisbane, and this colleague didn't try to do me a special favour by introducing me. He actually pitched exactly the research we are doing at Bond University, and not only Bond University but also Murdoch University, because I'm an adjunct at Murdoch University as well.

I was then interviewed by the TEDx director. You must know her, Juanita. She is just unbelievable. She's a coach, and she really knows what she's doing. In that interview, she saw exactly what you said, Megan, the passion.

Megan Walker: Mm.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: And of course the results associated with this problem of mobile phones. But in that interview I also talked not only about my passion for the research and the problem, but about how it had affected me. I first became interested in mobile phones as contaminated platforms when my little girl was born back in 2014. My wife unfortunately had to go through a Caesarean, and in the surgical theatre, there were medical doctors with mobile phones. That's where I said, "Oh, something is wrong here."

I am a molecular biologist, and I teach microbiology and immunology at Bond University, so it was really strange for me. And I waited until the birth of my second baby, in 2017, to say, "That's it. I need to do something about it." I started this whole research with a team: a team from Dubai Police, a team from Murdoch University and a team at Bond University. It was a very big consortium of very interesting and very inquisitive people in that particular topic.

So that interview allowed me to be selected. Then I went through four months of TEDx training, and it was unbelievable. Every week I had to drive to Brisbane, and we were coached by Juanita Glenn, Rob, and so many incredible people who really know what they're doing.

Every week was about understanding the spirit of TEDx. The spirit is how you can be good at remembering a very important script, the one you have given them about what you're doing, polished in a certain way that fits TEDx, and then learning it in such a way that you communicate and convey your message.

All that coaching every week was not only top-notch, it allowed me to see my weaknesses as an individual in terms of my capacity to talk in front of people. I'm a teacher at university, an associate professor, and I'm quite used to talking to many people. But in that particular environment, they raised the expectation to the highest level. I really loved Juanita's coaching. I embedded myself in it and ticked the boxes of what I needed to do. I was very, very supported, with taps on the shoulder for progress.

At the end of the day, you do that journey by pushing yourself forward, learning your script and putting emotion into it, because every single sentence is connected to what you're doing. The biggest scary moment for me was wondering what would happen to me, Lotti, when it was time to showcase, on the day. And I was so well prepared that I was not stressed, Megan. Not stressed at all. The preparation TEDxBrisbane gave me was unreal. I went there, and bingo, bingo, bingo. I said what I wanted to say. You saw it. I hope you liked it.

Megan Walker: Wonderful. Fantastic. And what would you say to other clinicians, practitioners, therapists, researchers, other people who have educational information they want to package up, but who are quite scared of the vulnerability of being the face of their work? What would you say as encouragement for those people?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Look, to encourage anybody: anyone is able to embark on training, a strategic momentum to progress. Of course, there are some people who might not be able to go through it, but the matter of the fact is, you must try.

And when you try, and this is really paramount, you need to be surrounded by people who know exactly how to get you to progress, because they know every single subtle strategy to get you from A to B to C, all the way to Z. Some people might give up in between, and that's a pity, and that's fine, because sometimes there are other issues going on. But it's worth going. Bottom line: try it. If you are given the opportunity, make sure the team supports you, and at the end of the day, you can do anything.

Megan Walker: So good. So good. Amazing. It's always amazing talking to you, Lotti. I learn so much every time. I really encourage everyone listening to get in touch with Lotti and his team. We've got the contact details below wherever you're watching this episode.

And look for opportunities where you might be able to connect the team with someone you know, a decision-maker in aged care, a facility, a hospital, food handling, and definitely airports. What a no-brainer to put your keys and your phone through and have them come out clean, so we're all entering and exiting clean environments.

In 10 years' time, I can see this will be the norm, but you're the one pushing it from what's currently not the norm to being the norm. We encourage you and recognise your passion, Lotti, and thank you for your aim of keeping us all safe, which we want to join you in as well. So thank you so much, Lotti. Any final words to wrap us up?

Dr Lotti Tajouri: I just want to thank you again. That's the second time we've had this interview, and that's really great. As I said, if people can watch the TEDx talk online, that would be amazing, and support it and leave some comments if they want. And indeed, we call for global support, both for access and for a bit of funding.

And by the way, I'd be absolutely delighted if people invited me to come to them, give a presentation, give a summary of the outcomes and get them involved in every single step of our progress. That's something we do really well too.

Megan Walker: Beautiful. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Lotti. We wish you every success, and we can't wait to talk to you for our third update. Talk to you soon.

Dr Lotti Tajouri: Thank you. Thank you.

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Connect with Dr. Lotti Tajouri

• Get in touch with Lotti and the research team: [email protected]