Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, regular and thorough handwashing by staff at restaurants, bars, senior-care facilities, schools, and other public-facing businesses and facilities is more crucial than ever. But workers don’t always remember to wash their hands, or know how long to wash them thoroughly. And neither employers nor the public usually have any way of knowing if workers are practicing proper hand hygiene.
Ramp, an Australian-based system integrator, created SafeWash, a UHF-based solution that provides unprecedented visibility into employee handwashing habits and shares the data with employers and customers.
Employees enrolled by their employer in the SafeWash program wear name badges, wristbands, or lanyards embedded with a UHF RFID tag. Small sensors placed near wash basins or hand-sanitizer dispensers read the signal from the tags each time an employee approaches the handwashing station. The sensors log the amount of time each employee spends washing their hands, and a timed indicator light in the sensor illuminates for the duration of the recommended hashwashing period, to help employees know when they’ve washed enough. When the employee has finished washing, the SafeWash sensor transmits the data by WiFi to the employer and to any customer who has signed up for the program. Data is displayed in a mobile app.
SafeWash promotes potentially life-saving hygiene and reduces the risk of disease by prompting staff to thoroughly and frequently wash their hands. By making up-to-the-minute hand-washing data publicly available, SafeWash demonstrates to customers of the business that the establishment takes hand-washing and sanitization seriously, promoting customer loyalty and bolstering its reputation.
SafeWash employs our Belt NXP UCODE 8 UHF inlay in employee badges. The inlays contain a unique digital identifier for each employee, enabling the sensor to note and log each of the employees’ handwashing sessions. Because using UHF tags in close proximity to the human body can affect radio-frequency signal transmission, we worked with Ramp to conduct extensive testing of different inlays and badges, helping them arrive at a configuration that delivered consistently accurate readings.
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