Britplas’s Safesee door, featuring an opaque panel which is quickly switchable to ‘clear’ to allow patient observation, and which is designed, as a whole, as a ‘programmable scale’ that enables staff to set a trigger point for notification of ligature attempts, has won a major international award.
The Safesee won the Product Design for Healthcare Application award at the 2013 Design & Health International Academy Awards, staged recently during the 9th Design & Health World Congress & Exhibition in Brisbane, Australia. The Product Design prize was awarded ‘for a product that adheres to human factor principles, is integrally installed in a healthcare environment, advances levels of technical performance, and integrates with the setting designed to accommodate it’. The door’s opaque panel ensures patient privacy, but, at the swipe of a card or a fob (for example, during observation rounds), can be rendered ‘instantly clear’ to allow viewing. The time and the name of the individual carrying out the observation are instantly logged – for an auditable record. Anti-ligature-wise, a design team specifying the Safesee for a mental healthcare bedroom might, say, choose 40 kg as an alarm trigger point for an adult male ward, with a delay of 8 seconds before an alert is triggered. These parameters can be changed at any time using a simple Windows programme, while any alerts are instantly logged. In addition, the door opens inwards, but has an invisible, ‘instant release’ anti-barricade jamb operated by the same card or fob used for observation. No keys or tools are required. In 2009 Britplas won the same award for its Safevent window.
