Proventix’s focus on hand hygiene has become especially paramount to companies in the midst of COVID-19.
As many Birmingham businesses prepare for employees to return to work, hand hygiene is top of mind to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace.
Though hand hygiene may be a new paramount issue, it is the bedrock of Birmingham-based Proventix’s business.
Originally established in 2008 for use in hospitals, Proventix’s electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring technology provides real-time data on how often employees wash their hands in a given timeframe. The company is expanding beyond its roots in health care and into new industries thanks to COVID-19, earning it a spot on Newsweek’s Best Infection Prevention Products list earlier this month.
“COVID has brought an awareness to an issue Proventix has been fighting since its inception, and that is the importance of washing your hands, whether it be in a formalized, acute care setting or a non-formalized setting like going to the bathroom in your own home,” said John Lee, Proventix’s president and COO. “We all recognize that washing our hands not only helps deter the spread of infections, but, in essence, keeps us as individuals well. We simply can help prevent the spread of disease.”
Historically the company has targeted health care settings, particularly hospitals, said Felicia Boyd, director of clinical support for Proventix. She said businesses from various sectors have been reaching out recently to help get employees back to work and improving hand hygiene across the board.
Proper hand hygiene often means a substantial behavior change, especially for health care providers, who are encouraged to wash their hands upon entering and exiting a patient’s room, per guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The company’s nGage technology monitors how often this happens, keeping providers accountable as their hand hygiene data is stored and available for later feedback through a badge that individuals wear outfitted with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.
Now, Boyd said, the company is pivoting and adapting its technology to other businesses that are concerned with the safety of their employees.
“In a non-health care setting, if we can identify areas and groups of people to focus on hand hygiene compliance, employers will be able to truly know if employees washed their hands when entering or leaving the bathroom, meeting room or kitchen area,” she said. “We can also help identify where [hand hygiene] dispensers need to be located and give companies a lot of data to go back to that focus on individual compliance, which is where the behavior change occurs.”
Other technology the company offers includes devices positioned next to hand hygiene dispensers that, when a badge is detected, lights up to remind employees to wash their hands. As a part of its platform, Proventix also has a solution, nDemic, that tracks traffic going in and out of a certain area so, if an employee ends up contracting COVID-19, data can show what other employees might have been exposed as well.
“As we bring employees back into a work setting, employers are trying to work towards a safer environment, and we are here, ready and available for hospitals or businesses interested in implementing hand hygiene in their setting and make it a primary focus,” said Boyd.