Watch a film about the design and research team on Vimeo.
Sally Halls
Senior Associate, Helen Hamlyn Centre, Royal College of Art
I am Sally Halls.
Grace Davey
Research Associate, Helen Hamlyn Centre, Royal College of Art
And I am Grace Davey.
Sally Halls
And we have been working on six projects for the Design Bugs Out programme.
Grace Davey
Research
Sally and I spent about three weeks touring round different hospitals around the country, talking to nurses trying to identify why healthcare staff thought that infections were a problem.
Sally Halls
And then once we had the briefs, we were able to visit a number of London based hospitals to see these products in action in those hospitals and talk to staff there about why they were experiencing problems, how the designs could be improved.
Expert input
There was an expert reference group attached to the project who were kind of the country’s leading microbiologists, nursing practitioners, and they were able to give us some steer on, you know, when we came to a crossroads, of should we follow this design solution or this other design solution, they were able to say well actually, from a nursing point of view this is the most appropriate one.
And also we spoke to some manufacturers and we have actually collaborated with some manufacturers on some of the projects.
Intelligent Mattress
Sally Halls
A conventional mattress basically consists of a foam core with a waterproof cover on top. The waterproof cover may become degraded over time, it may be pierced through syringe needles, etcetera, and there’s a chance of cross infection between patients as new patients move through that bed space. What our solution does is it indicates when any fluids have passed through the mattress cover by changing colour around that site. So it reacts to any fluids going through and then when the nurses come to change the sheets or come to wipe the mattress clean, there’s an immediate visual indicator telling them that the mattress has been compromised.
Blood Pressure Cuff
Grace Davey
Currently the blood pressure cuff is a vital piece of equipment that is used on the wards. It’s got a big patch of Velcro on which obviously attracts bugs, it can’t be wiped down, and also the material that’s being used, it’s not really a wipeable fabric. It’s not a very plasticky surface. We have simply removed the Velcro and we have actually used magnets inside. We have also used a more wipeable material, it looks as though it should be wiped clean, it dries quite quickly, so it’s much easier for the nurses to clean on the ward rounds in between every patient.
Pulse Oximeter
Sally Halls
The pulse oximeter that seems to be most commonly used in hospitals, it’s got a lot of nooks and crannies, it’s got a mechanical hinge which means that you can’t kind of have a smooth enclosed surface. So what we have done is we have used a one shot moulding which creates a smooth, wipe cleanable surface which the nurses can wipe clean, you know, in between patients.
Cannula Time Tracker
Grace Davey
The cannulas are supposed to be in place for up to three days. That’s kind of the general protocol, but it’s very difficult to monitor this. This is monitored in the doctor’s and the patient’s notes. We have used a technology which is called time strip, it will time a period of three days. So this is activated when the cannula is inserted, and the nurse can immediately see at the point of insertion how long that cannula has now been in.
Curtain Clip
Sally Halls
There is a common hand touch site there which isn’t actually a cleanable surface. So what we wanted to do was create a handle that attaches very simply to any existing curtains, and then this can be wiped clean every day by the nursing staff or the cleaning staff.
Wipe Dispenser
Grace Davey
Ideally every patient would have their own washbasin in their own bed space, but in practice this is just not feasible in hospitals. So we wanted to design something which was specifically for patients, so patients can clean themselves when they want, before they eat, after they go to the toilet, without having to rely on nursing staff to give them something to clean themselves. So we designed a patient pack which is specifically for the patients. It kind of empowers the patients, the patients can put it wherever they want in their bed space, on their bedside table, on the side of their bed. They can use it when they need to.
Sally Halls
Problems
We found that a lot of designs had lots of nooks and crannies, so it was about creating these smooth surfaces and no little crevices, so everything can be wiped clean. In some instances we were looking at new technologies in order to kind of facilitate what we were trying to achieve. So, for example, with the time strip technology and adding that to the cannulas.
Grace Davey
With the mattress, we were using quite a cutting edge technology, we were trying to use a hydrochromic ink, and then because we were laminating another layer on top of it, with one of the inks, this lamination actually reacted, so there was quite a lot of trial and error, there.
Sally Halls
For the blood pressure cuff, we worked our way through a number of different vinyls and PVCs trying to find the correct one that would work with our magnets and the new attachment mechanism that we were working on.
Reviewing the project
It’s been rather challenging, you know, producing six projects in six months, but I feel like we've done a good job, and well, I hope the public think that we’ve done a good job. And you know, working with the Design Council has been really great. They’ve been, you know, on hand at all stages to provide the help that we needed really.