Not Applicable
Not Applicable
The subject technology is in the technical field of hand sanitation assurance and enforcement for protection against contamination, as well as systems, methods, and apparatus making use thereof.
Hand washing is widely recognized as the primary critical procedure for preventing health care associated infections. Transient microorganisms may reside on hands, being picked up from others, from surfaces, from tools, or from the air. Thus, they can be spread. For people who are already debilitated because of another injury or infection, the introduction of additional microorganisms may cause further damage and may very well kill.
Although common practice today requires the use of gloves to mitigate the spread of microorganisms from person to patient, hand washing remains critical. Indeed, the use of gloves introduces another possible transmission and receiving medium for microorganisms, as gloves must still come into contact with hands as gloves are donned, used, and doffed.
Consider the normal case of a person who works in a health care institution, and who has one or more patients to serve. Service may be medical, a simple delivery of food, delivery of mail, personal hygiene care, simply a visit to check on well-being, social visit, and many other possibilities where one person comes in contact with another.
The hands of such a person in a care giving role should be washed frequently, and always before or after certain events. These events include:
A taxonomy of health care hand washing includes at least social, clinical, and surgical washing. Each requires a different degree of comprehensiveness and resulting cleanliness. Social hand washing is that which is sufficient prior to or following non-invasive social contact. Soap and water are generally sufficient, with care taken not to re-contaminate the hands through post-washing touches of sink handles, soap dispensers, towel dispensers, and other surfaces. Social washing is generally sufficient after a cough or sneeze, before and after meals, and certainly after toilet use. A clinical hand wash is much more rigorous, and is used before and after procedures where the patient is being served in relative isolation. Anti-microbial soap with an antiseptic agent is normally required for clinical hand washing. Surgical hand washing is the most rigorous, as it is required before and after very invasive procedures which of course include surgery. Anti-microbial cleansers with more power agents that used in clinical hand washing are required.
Hand sanitizers are in wide use today and are useful for social and some clinical use where contact with a patient is direct but non-invasive. Typical protocol consists essentially of the following when in the presence of a patient:
A significant risk of harm can be mitigated by adding a step at entry to, and another step at exit from, an area where the patient resides, and applied as an envelope around the typical protocol mentioned above. The resulting protocol is then as follows:
The subject technology is a method, system, and apparatus for preventing a person with dirty hands from engaging in activity that may put others in danger. Typical uses would be in hospitals, where patients would be endangered by health care workers who may propagate illness from patient to patient. However, unlike other systems that merely warn or sound an alarm when a person fails to wash hands, the subject technology seeks to stop the person from proceeding with contact by having a barrier block passage. The other systems may even warn or sound an alarm in such a way that only the person whose hands should be washed will know. The subject technology is patient centric, and does not rely on the person to perceive a warning or to act upon it. Furthermore, the patient and others may see entry and exit, and whether hands were washed. The proposed system acts to deter entry or exit, and thus ensures that the person's attention is alerted and that a patient to be served is protected. Overrides allow the care giver to bypass the system on an emergency basis or when hands are otherwise necessarily occupied, such as in carrying a tray or other objects.
Current implementation of the subject technology presumes that the person's hands are dirty, and thus entry or exit is denied from the start. Once hand washing has occurred, then entry or exit is allowed.
A dispense-only switch 120 allows a care giver to sanitize hands while the arm 102 is in blocking position, as may be required during care giving procedures after the care giver attained passage. An array of indicators 122, which may be light emitting diode (LED) or other illuminators direct the care giver where to place hands in order to receive sanitizing. Further, the array of indicators 122 may be capable of displaying various colors and in various arrangements to display a variety of messages to the care giver. An array of proximity sensors 124 detect the presence of an object, such as an hand, an obstruction, or people passing close by. To allow an enumerated group to pass, a care giver may use a group selector 156 to indicate how many individuals to allow passage. In such case, the hand hygiene device 100 will dispense through arm 102 the number of units of fluid equal to the group number and then raise arm 102 once to allow the group to pass and can then count the number of individuals who pass through before lowering the arm 102 again. This allows the group to enter without having to wait for the arm 102 to dispense fluid, raise to allow the individual to pass, and then lower after the individual passes, for each individual.
Suppose, at the test for estop pressed 312, the determination is “no.” Control then flows to hand detected 316. From there, two control threads are possible. One includes a test for hand-free 318, which, if true, then proceeds to set reminder and set light pattern d 320 (to remind the care giver to sanitize hands), disengage arm 322, and proceed through wait 324, detect passage 336, and timeout 346 before returning to engage arm and set light pattern a 308.
Hands free operation raises the arm 102 without regard to hand washing events, but does so for a short period. Hands free operation may be initiated by the estop switch 118, and tested at estop pressed 312. This would also be used when a person is carrying a tray or some other object and cannot wash hands while holding the tray or object.
If hand-free 318 is not “yes”, then control flows to determine group count 330 and sanitize hands 340 for each care giver according to the count. The other thread includes a test for dispense only 328, which, if true, leads to sanitize hands 338 and, regardless, back to engage arm and set light pattern a 308.
In all modes of operation, the hand hygiene device 100 is operational from front or back, and thus a single deployment may manage passage to and from a given area.
Various additional embodiments of the hand hygiene device include, without limitation:
While the foregoing written description of the hand hygiene device enables one of ordinary skill to make and use what is considered presently to be the best mode thereof, those of ordinary skill will understand and appreciate the existence of variations, combinations, and equivalents of the specific embodiment, method, and examples herein. The subject technology presented here should therefore not be limited by the above described embodiments, methods, or examples, but by all embodiments and methods within the scope and spirit of the subject technology.
This is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/061,728 filed on Oct. 23, 2013, titled “Hand Hygiene,” and priority is claimed for provisional application Ser. No. 61/717,921, filed Oct. 24, 2012, titled “Hand Hygiene,” each of which is incorporated by reference.
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
3559341 | Alvarado | Feb 1971 | A |
6012252 | Kocznar | Jan 2000 | A |
6125482 | Foster | Oct 2000 | A |
6236317 | Cohen | May 2001 | B1 |
7293645 | Harper | Nov 2007 | B2 |
7375640 | Plost | May 2008 | B1 |
8823525 | Cartner | Sep 2014 | B2 |
9123233 | Hermann | Sep 2015 | B2 |
10607471 | Hood | Mar 2020 | B2 |
20020183979 | Wildman | Dec 2002 | A1 |
20060231568 | Lynn | Oct 2006 | A1 |
20100164728 | Plost | Jul 2010 | A1 |
20100293855 | Bolduc | Nov 2010 | A1 |
20100328076 | Kyle | Dec 2010 | A1 |
20110234598 | Scarola | Sep 2011 | A1 |
20120212344 | Forsberg | Aug 2012 | A1 |
20120313014 | Stibich | Dec 2012 | A1 |
20130027199 | Bonner | Jan 2013 | A1 |
20130199094 | Lachance | Aug 2013 | A1 |
20130229276 | Hunter | Sep 2013 | A1 |
20140070950 | Snodgrass | Mar 2014 | A1 |
20140197194 | Wegelin | Jul 2014 | A1 |
20140279603 | Ortiz | Sep 2014 | A1 |
20140291552 | Schumacher | Oct 2014 | A1 |
20150022361 | Gaisser | Jan 2015 | A1 |
20150170502 | Harris | Jun 2015 | A1 |
20150194043 | Dunn | Jul 2015 | A1 |
20150206077 | Himmelmann | Jul 2015 | A1 |
20150206415 | Wegelin | Jul 2015 | A1 |
20150228181 | Himmelmann | Aug 2015 | A1 |
20160042635 | Rosebraugh | Feb 2016 | A1 |
20160284142 | Elbling | Sep 2016 | A1 |
20170049915 | Brais | Feb 2017 | A1 |
20170206771 | Hermann | Jul 2017 | A1 |
20170246331 | Lloyd | Aug 2017 | A1 |
20190030195 | Hatti | Jan 2019 | A1 |
20190091738 | Chen | Mar 2019 | A1 |
20190251766 | Wegelin | Aug 2019 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20190365165 A1 | Dec 2019 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
61717921 | Oct 2012 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 14061728 | Oct 2013 | US |
Child | 16543583 | US |