Is An NH-Based Company Borrowing An Idea From Grey’s Anatomy To Fight COVID?

There's a saying that talks about how occasionally, life can imitate art. And I suppose that this is an occasion where that saying could be used and even possibly true?

Because it just came out recently that a New Hampshire start-up business is developing a product that can fight COVID, and it's pretty similar to a scene shown on Grey's Anatomy a couple of weeks ago.

According to a business report on WMUR, Air Cleaners, Inc. out of Bristol, New Hampshire is in the process of developing what they call a "Clean Air Curtain," which they say creates an air barrier that basically captures and kills almost all particles of airborne particles (like COVID) within seconds, which will obviously make it easier to get back to as normal of an existence as possible.

Paul Bemis, who is the President of Air Cleaners, Inc., told WMUR's Fred Kocher that the Clean Air Curtain combines HEPA Filtration and Ultraviolet Irradiation to do the capturing and killing of particles.

And that's where I was like -- hey, WAIT A SECOND, I've heard something SUPER similar before. Like, a couple of weeks ago. On the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy.

About 9 1/2 minutes into the show, (I'm about to name some characters, so follow along,) Dr. Bailey is showing a returning Dr. Webber around the hospital and what has become the "new normal" with pandemic and COVID procedures. During the "tour," a machine that looks a bit like R2D2 from Star Wars is wheeled by the two of them. Dr. Bailey explains to Dr. Webber that the machine uses a UV light to kill germs and disinfect an entire room in minutes.

Essentially, that's pretty similar to what Air Cleaners, Inc. is saying their Clean Air Curtain can do, right? Clean the air of almost all airborne particles so that it's safe (or at least a lot safer) to breathe in since the particles will be killed off and not shared. It just sounds like it will work a lot quicker than the machine on Grey's (which is a real thing, by the way -- it's called a Xenex LightStrike Robot.)

So what do you think? Is it possible Air Cleaners, Inc. borrowed the idea from Grey's? (If I had to guess, I'd say probably unlikely -- I don't think you could come up with as many facts and ideas in a 2 weeks time about this, but it's definitely intriguing to think about life imitating art!) Also, here's the lead-up to the scene from Grey's (I couldn't find the actual clip on YouTube, but it's available on ABC.com and Hulu.)