FEBRUARY 2009

What an achievement!

Moville man, James Bonner, Managing Director of Itronik Interconnect in Letterkenny, has developed a tag that for the first time allows staff hand hygiene to be monitored, to stop the spread of MRSA and other highly infectious and deadly hospital diseases.

Using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology called HigenX, hospital staff are issued with tags that monitor how long they spend in front of a sink and even how much hand washing gel they use. Poor hand hygiene standards are regularly cited as one of the leading reasons for the spread of MRSA in hospitals. Patient Focus, an Irish-based patient advocacy group, states that proper hand washing would reduce MRSA infection rates by 33%.

"We started out planning to develop a system to monitor hygiene in bathrooms but quickly discovered there were more applications," said James, "We've been trialing this tag in hospitals for the past two years, and we also have ongoing trials in food processing factories and fast food outlets." Not alone can we monitor hand washing, but with tags embedded in staff uniforms we can tell how often they've been washed and even the temperature at which they've been washed.

Around €3 million has been invested in developing the device over the past five years, and the product is now being taken to market.

Itronik currently employs four people and hopes to increase that to ten as it consolidates its final assembly and sales functions at its Letterkenny base.

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