ACES profile: Clariton’s hand scanner tackles hospital-induced infections

In 1847 the Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis was the first clinician to demonstrate that hand washing reduces the incidence of hospital-acquired infections. Now 165 years later, his fellow countryman and Science|Business ACES Young Entrepreneur 2012 Tamas Haidegger is poised to deliver an automated test for verifying that healthcare workers have disinfected their hands.

“Alcohol-based hand rubs now used in hospitals are effective in killing 99.99 per cent of bacteria. The problem is, if you don’t wash your hands properly, for the correct amount of time, the rub can’t do its job,” says Clariton founder and CEO Haidegger.

Rather than the laborious process of testing for bacterial contamination, the Hand-in-Scan device developed by Haidegger and his team at Clariton detects unclean areas of the hand instantly after users wash their hands with a rub or soap containing ultra violet (UV) reflective powder.

Haidegger developed the system as device to teach the proper cleansing of hands, especially in medical centres. After washing, staff insert their hands into a reader with captures a UV picture. This is then transmitted to a laptop computer for analysis with image processing software written by Clariton. The software maps any variations in UV distribution, giving an objective assessment of how well the hands have been washed, and then provides an overall quality score.

As Haidegger notes, it is not just a case of getting this right once a day. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has established five rules to guide medical staff on when hands must be washed, such as before touching a patient and after touching any body fluids. “We can do what no one else can do, which is to automatically monitor compliance of staff at all times,” says Haidegger, who is also Clariton’s chief technology officer.

The identity of the member of staff using the Hand-in-Scan system can be checked via the contactless RFID (radio frequency identification) badges now worn by most healthcare workers, and the read-out from each test reported back to the hospital’s IT system.

Haidegger says Hand-in-Scan has the potential to significantly reduce the incidence of hospital-acquired infections, since an estimated 30 per cent of such infections could be prevented with proper hand hygiene and practice. Despite this promise, Haidegger was initially uncertain about becoming an entrepreneur. As a student at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics he took a number of courses on technology commercialisation and innovation. “All I heard was frightening stories about going bankrupt,” he said.

The idea for Hand-in-Scan was initially suggested by a fellow PhD student. Haidegger found himself supervising the project and working with other students to develop a prototype. “It was at this point that the Technology and Knowledge Transfer Office at the university told me ‘this cries out for a business case’,” Haidegger said. In September 2010 the university filed the patent, ‘Method and apparatus for hand disinfection quality control’.

Crucially for the team of PhD students behind Hand-in-Scan, the filing of the patent freed the group to publish. “That was important for us in terms of our academic careers,” Haidegger noted.

The patent filing also left Haidegger - as founder and CEO of Clariton - “desperate for funding” to test the technology in a live setting. Relief came in the form of an email from the government agency Contact Singapore offering grants for innovative ideas involving clinical trials in Singapore. “We got the grant, and through that introductions to people who were prepared to incorporate our technology into a large-scale trial,” said Haidegger.

The offer to take part in the clinical trial came through in March 2011, six weeks before the study was due to start, and left Haidegger struggling to raise the €6,000 he and his team needed to fly to Singapore with the Hand-in-Scan prototype and supervise its use in the trial. “I was finishing my PhD in April and at the same time trying to find the money,” Haidegger said. “In Hungary raising €6,000 from nothing in six weeks is not easy; there was not enough time to apply for grants.”

In the event, Haidegger succeeded. “This gave us the chance of lifetime to go to Singapore and apply our technology as part of a hand hygiene training programme involving 4,762 people.”

Armed with clinical proof, Haidegger is now moving on to raise more money and commercialise Hand-in-Scan. “We are still in seed phase and negotiating with a lot people,” he said. “We can do the engineering: now it’s about business development and creating trust with the customers.”