PullClean, an ‘innovative door handle’ that sanitises the user’s hands, reportedly ‘triples the rate of hand sanitisation rates’, and provides feedback on usage through a monitoring system, has been launched in the UK by Altitude Medical UK.
The system encourages people to clean their hands every time they enter and exit a room, ‘making hand hygiene simple and trackable’. To mark its UK launch, PullClean can be seen at London’s Science Museum as part of a new exhibition, ‘Superbugs: the fight for our lives’, which runs until Spring 2019.
Altitude Medical UK says a pilot trial of a prototype of PullClean in the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in the US saw the rate of hand sanitation rise from 24 to 77 per cent after it was installed. The company explained: “PullClean encourages people to clean their hands simply by placing the sanitiser in a more direct position and replacing two separate actions (sanitising and then opening a door) with one seamless movement.
Co-inventor, Dr Jake McKnight, said: “We wanted to make it so easy for people to sanitise their hands that it is almost sub-conscious. It’s a small step to press a button when you’re already holding the handle. The irony is that handles are usually a big transmitter of bugs, but PullClean can help stop them in their tracks.”
The design is simple – a tube-shaped cartridge placed in the centre of a hollow door handle releases a small amount of sanitiser when a blue paddle button is pressed. Each handle includes a monitoring system that records a variety of data – from how much sanitiser is left in the handle and when the cartridge should next be changed, to hourly usage statistics compared with how frequently doors are opened. For healthcare settings this can include hand sanitisation rates across wards, shifts, and even entire hospitals.
Since November 2016, PullClean has been used in the US by organisations including Hilton and Marriott hotels, and by a number of hospitals, care homes, doctors’ surgeries, restaurants, and universities.
Altitude Medical UK is based in Oxford, and has an office in Chardon, Ohio. PullClean was conceived by Dr Alex Oshmyansky who, while working as a junior doctor at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, was frustrated by unsuccessful approaches to encourage and monitor hand hygiene in the healthcare setting. In conjunction with fellow University of Oxford PhD student, Dr Jake McKnight, a product design engineer, PullClean was devised.
