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Improving hand hygiene at hospitals, one door knob at a time

With all the recent talk about hygiene and hospitals (not to mention the risk of spreading Ebola) a UK-based company says it has a simple solution: a door handle that dispenses a sanitizing gel, thereby ensuring workers and visitors keep their hands as clean as possible. Pure Hold is the company behind the Hygiene Handle, […]

By Dan Verel on November 04, 2014

With all the recent talk about hygiene and hospitals (not to mention the risk of spreading Ebola) a UK-based company says it has a simple solution: a door handle that dispenses a sanitizing gel, thereby ensuring workers and visitors keep their hands as clean as possible.

Pure Hold is the company behind the Hygiene Handle, and it says the technology is “ideal for for use in food processing plants, hospitals, clean rooms and all staff and public toilets to ensure that hand hygiene is enforced.”

Currently, hospitals still largely rely on manual methods to track hand hygiene. But systems are increasingly looking toward electronic technologies to monitor hand hygiene, so Pure Hold’s handle is certainly timely.

We’ve all seen the wall-mounted sanitizing dispensers, but it turns out that few people, especially visitors, in hospitals use them, according to Pure Hold.

“Studies have shown that a high percentage of hospital visitors do not use conventional wall-mounted gel dispensers because they are in too much of a rush, can’t be bothered, are not aware they need to or because the gel dispenser is empty,” the company says on its website. “This is despite the best efforts of the hospitals in displaying a variety of posters and instructions throughout their buildings. It seems that in a busy and cluttered world, wall-mounted gel dispensers and posters are losing the battle to grab people’s attention.”

“In trials, installation of the Pure Hold Hygiene Handle increased compliance rates by 700 percent,” the company claims.

That’s pretty good compared to the current level of compliance, which one survey put at around 80 percent compliant for 66 percent of hospital respondents, while 59 percent put the number at less than 70 percent compliant. Maybe elevator buttons are next?

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