14 DAY TRIAL // Infections are always a risk when dealing with open wounds, which is why hospitals smell so much of antiseptic: they get constantly sterilized. Now, they might get even cleaner, though not in a nose-murdering way.
The Agency of Design, a British design studio, put together a new type of door handle, one that dispenses sanitizer whenever your grab it.
Normally, sanitizer is something you find in the washroom, but hospitals are the places where extra care is needed.
The CDC (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that many people get sick just form being in the hospital.
One in 25 patients contacts an infection while being cared for whatever injury or ailment got them in the hospital in the first place.
Reducing pathogens is the most logical way to cut down on the odds of that happening in the future, and sanitizer helps with that.
We use our hands for pretty much anything after all, and microbes or bacteria can wind up on our faces and inside us whenever we, say, scratch our noses.
The PullClean door handle will ensure that your palms, at least, as are clean and disinfected as possible.
Schools, libraries and other places that are bound to be crowded and where things are likely to change hands often are targeted by the PullClean door handles as well.
You still need to hold your hand beneath the door handle and apply pressure, so it still falls to people to do it, but doctors and nurses will doubtlessly get into the habit easily enough, and patients or visitors are bound to do it just because of the exposure. Trials in US hospitals have so far shown an increase in hand sanitizing from 22% to 77%.
The handle looks more or less normal, save for the blue area near the bottom, where the pump is. The sanitizer reservoir is inside the handle itself ,of course.
The stomach flu, for example, is a disease that will spread much harder if you sanitize your hand before going in a room. It's one of the illnesses that spreads easiest on surfaces, and one that many pick up, or at least carry, without even knowing.
The PullClean door handles come with a software called CountClean, which keep tabs on how often people sanitize their hands. It also says how much sanitizer is left, so that janitors, or whoever else, can refill/replace the sanitizer when needed.