In the News
GVSU group develops system to reduce hospital infections and increase sanitation
November 08, 2018
The idea for the system came from Bradley Ahlgren, an orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of Sterilogy. He said wall-mounted sanitizers were inconvenient and often empty, so he started carrying around canisters of sanitizers in his scrubs.
Zaima enlisted the help of aMDI in spring 2017 to design, build and test a series of prototypes for the hand hygiene system, which includes three separate devices. The personal sanitizer unit (PSU) is a body-worn device that dispenses the foam sanitizer; the zone alert emitter unit is attached to a patient's bed and communicates with the PSU to remind health care workers to sanitize; and the base station unit is placed at a central location, like a nurse's station, and uploads data from PSUs when they are in close range.
The aMDI team that developed the system included graduate assistants, undergraduate students and a professor, Karl Brakora, from the School of Engineering. The group recently finished the first set of prototypes and conducted demonstrations in a hospital patient room simulation unit at Grand Valley's Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences. Continue Reading