Which Hospital Department Has the Dirtiest Phones?

Two hospital studies asked the same question, which department's phones carry the most bacteria, and got different answers. A 2005 study in an Israeli hospital found a 27-times gap between wards. A larger 2021 study in Zambia found almost no gap at all, because nearly every phone was contaminated regardless of department. Read together, they point to the same practical conclusion: don't assume any one ward is clean, and don't assume a shared charging cable is a neutral surface.

The 2005 study: a stark gap by ward

The most-cited number in this space comes from a 2005 letter in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. Researchers at a tertiary-care hospital in Israel swabbed 124 staff cell phones for Acinetobacter baumannii, a multidrug-resistant bacterium known for surviving on hospital surfaces. The contamination rate varied sharply by where staff worked:

Medical wards came out worst, ICU phones tested clean. But the same study found the opposite pattern on staff hands: ICU staff had the highest hand-contamination rate (41%) of any ward, even though their phones tested at 0%. The researchers also documented actual transmission, one bacterial clone turned up on both cell phones and hands of ICU staff, and matched a strain found colonizing ICU patients' skin (Borer et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2005).

The 2021 study: department stopped mattering

A larger, more recent study complicates the tidy "avoid the medical ward" takeaway. In 2021, researchers at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia swabbed 117 healthcare workers' phones across ICUs, a pediatric operating theatre and general wards. Overall contamination: 79% of phones carried potentially pathogenic bacteria, including drug-resistant staph and, again, Acinetobacter. This time, the study found no significant association between contamination and work area (Chizimu et al., Infection Prevention in Practice, 2021).

Put the two studies side by side and the honest reading isn't "the medical ward is dirtier" or "the ICU is safe." It's that contamination is common everywhere phones travel with staff, and which specific ward tops the list depends on the hospital, the year and which pathogen you're testing for. The authors of the 2021 study noted the same thing: contamination "varies geographically and also within different institutions," which is exactly why a single 2005 snapshot from one hospital shouldn't be read as a permanent ranking.

What both studies agree on

Neither study is really about phones being uniquely filthy, phones are just one more high-touch surface that rarely gets disinfected between users. Both studies flagged the same underlying issue: most healthcare workers don't clean their phones regularly, and phones move between patient rooms, nurses' stations and break rooms all shift without anyone thinking of them as a shared surface. A doorknob gets cleaned on a rounding schedule. A phone usually doesn't, and it touches a face and a pocket in between.

Why this matters for how phones actually get charged

The practical question a hospital or clinic facilities team faces isn't "how do we sterilize every phone," it's "how do we stop turning charging into another shared-contact point." A single charging cable coiled at a nurses' station, or a phone propped on a shared desk charger, means every device that plugs in touches the same cable and the same surface the last one did. A self-service powerbank station sidesteps that: each person pulls their own powerbank from its own slot and takes it with them, rather than several people's phones sharing one cable across a shift. It's a small design difference, but it's the same logic as the wider case for phone charging in hospitals: reduce the number of things a stressed visitor or a busy nurse has to touch, ask for, or wait on (see Phone Charging Stations for Hospitals, Clinics and Waiting Rooms for the fuller case). No hospital currently runs a Brick network for this specific reason, this is the hygiene argument for the vertical, not a customer story. The same slot-per-person logic is behind how powerbank sharing works more broadly: a station holds many powerbanks, each guest takes one and returns it anywhere on the network, no single cable doing double duty.

Facilities teams weighing a station for a waiting room, break room or lobby can see what's involved at brick.tech/get-a-station.

FAQ

Which hospital department has the dirtiest phones?

It depends on which study you read. A 2005 Israeli hospital study found medical-ward phones tested positive for multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter far more often (27%) than ICU phones (0%). A larger 2021 Zambian hospital study found contamination was high everywhere (79% of phones overall) with no significant difference by department. Treat every ward as a risk, not just one.

Are cell phones actually a source of hospital-acquired infections?

Researchers have documented real transmission, not just contamination. The 2005 study traced one bacterial strain from a staff phone and hand to skin colonization in an ICU patient. That doesn't mean phones are the primary route of hospital-acquired infection, but they are a documented one.

Why did ICU phones test clean in the 2005 study if ICU staff hands were the most contaminated?

The study doesn't explain the mismatch, but it's a reminder that phone contamination and hand contamination don't move together. ICU staff wash and glove up more, which may protect the phone even while other hand-to-hand contact stays high.

Does regular disinfection actually reduce phone contamination?

The 2021 study checked for this directly and found no significant link between how often staff said they disinfected their phones and how contaminated the phones actually tested, which the authors attributed partly to self-reported cleaning habits being unreliable. The more consistent fix is reducing shared contact points in the first place, not relying on staff to remember to wipe down a phone mid-shift.

How does a self-service charging station reduce this risk compared to a shared charger?

A shared cable or desk charger gets touched by whoever's phone was there before. A self-service powerbank station gives each person their own powerbank pulled from an individual slot, so charging stops being a shared-contact task and becomes a personal one, the same way a hospital would rather hand out individual supplies than have staff share one.