NOV. 5–SAN JOSE, CA–They say they do it, but there really was no way to tell, until now.

From the show floor at CleanRooms West 2002, John T. Miller, vice president of worldwide sales for UltraClenz, the Weymouth, MA-based company’s touch-free Pro-giene hand-washing system will hold personnel in cleanroom manufacturing environments accountable for perhaps the simplest forms of contamination control.

“Pathogens that enter the body through the mouth is killing people today,” says Miller. “Without regular hand-washing and glove changes, food can be contaminated and pharmaceutical batches can be messed up, and that’s expensive.”

The system, which is distributed by Micronova Inc. (Torrance, CA), works with a smart-badge system. The badge alerts a worker that it is time for a wash when a tiny amber-colored light in the badge turns red. When the approach the automatic faucet and touch-free soap dispenser, the badge triggers a voice-automated system that can instruct an employee in numerous languages when to get wet hands, get soap, scrub and rinse.

“It won’t let me get water mid-cycle,” Miller says. “It requires you to stay there for a 10, 20, or 30 second wash and tells you when to rinse.”

Once the wash is complete, system software logs it in real time, so that it not only holds personnel accountable, but it also helps pinpoint where the breach occurred in the event that a product was contaminated.

This type of technology is already catching on at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is changing standards for hand-washing for the nation’s hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices, mandating that soaps in the forms of foams, gels and rinse contain at least 60 percent isopropyl alcohol.

The CDC says more than two million patients acquire infections each year in U.S. hospitals, resulting in 90,000 deaths.

At Johns Hopkins, a system detects the movement in and out of patient rooms as well as hand-washing practices.

If a doctor or nurse does not wash, a message sounds as they leave the room.

“We did that so the message wouldn’t fall into the background,” Dr. Pamela Lipsett, director of the surgical intensive care unit, told The New York Times.

And the message works.

Hand washing has increased 40 percent, while infectious disease has decreased by 50 percent, says Sandra Swoboda, a nurse in the intensive care unit.

“In our unit,” she says, “big brother watching us is a benefit.”