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February 2013 | One of the biggest nights of the year for the design industry was February 22, the annual iF awards gala. The year’s best design innovations were honored in front of 2,000 industry bigwigs, and we’re proud to announce that WILDDESIGN’s work for our client General Sensing has won the prestigious iF Product Design Award this year. Since 1953 iF has been known as the perfect mediator between the worlds of design and business. Awards are given to the products that demonstrate exceptional design principles and make an especially valuable impact on the larger world.

It is truly an honor to be part of the iF community and to have our product, the Medsense hygiene monitoring system, stand alongside innovations like Philips’ Lifeline Cordless Phone system and the iPhone 4. General Sensing came to us with a unique and very important challenge, and the whole WILDDESIGN team is thrilled to have been part of this effort. Our efforts resulted in an innovative sensor-based hand hygiene monitoring system called MedSense.

A World Health Organization study has shown that, on average, of only 40% of health care workers correctly follow hand hygiene procedures, resulting in avoidable infections and sometimes even death. Hand hygiene can be a tricky process that’s easy to overlook or forget, but fortunately, using General Sensing’s innovative technology and tools, it proved an easy process to automate.

With unobtrusive badges (deemed “magic badges” by some of the hospital staff), the MedSense system is able to keep track of employee hygiene habits without using much power or hospital bandwidth, and a built-in web-based analytics tool helps administrators and employees keep track of everything the system takes note of.

The design is based on our extensive research at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where we sought out the best ways to monitor and enhance hand hygiene. There, we found unique conditions and a set of limitations that helped guide us toward an optimal solution: hospital workers needed an easy-to-use system that would remind them to practice hand hygiene without impeding their daily routines – no blaring PA incantations to “wash your hands!” The system also needed to work entirely independently from the hospital’s general system and be particularly easy to install.

The result is a “gentle reminder” system that helps make the hospital environment safer. It’s a wonderful example of how innovative design can have a real and positive impact on the world, and we’re so excited that we could be part of it and show that safety can also be beautiful.