Hospitals

How about this obnoxious germ alarm as a reminder for workers to wash their hands?

Safeguard, Procter & Gamble’s largest global personal care brand, has created a seriously loud handwashing […]

Safeguard, Procter & Gamble’s largest global personal care brand, has created a seriously loud handwashing reminder in a bid to keep people using public bathrooms from spreading so many germs.

It’s a soap dispenser rigged with an alarm. Pressure sensors placed on doors connect back to the dispenser/alarm, and when someone tries to open the door without having used the soap dispenser, the alarm is triggered. It stops when someone pushes the button on the dispenser.

Safeguard launched the system last fall in several fast food restaurants and schools in the Philippines.

It’s made for public settings, and there are a few reasons this noisy approach probably wouldn’t work in healthcare hand-washing. But some companies making hand hygiene products are taking a similar but scaled-back approach.

There’s the HyGreen and Hyginex systems, which use sensors to detect when a healthcare worker hasn’t washed his hands before approaching a patient and relays a vibration alarm to a wearable sensor. HanGenix uses an audible alarm, but it comes from a small wearable sensor.

It’s hard to imagine that a vibration or quiet noise would be as hard to ignore as the Germ Alarm, though. Check it out in action in the video above.

 

Shares0
Shares0