design
It is all about design
JimHutchinson | 01 Feb 2009
Everybody pees. Urinals are poorly designed. Pee ends up on shoes and pants and floors.
Someone in the Netherlands tackled this problem and designed a urinal that efficiently catches pee and uses a clever bit of psychology to help the boys leave the maximum amount of pee in the urinal. A fake fly is etched on the porcelain in precisely the right spot.
By the time it is realized that the fly doesn't move the pee is collected - simply brilliant.
Sink design to blame for outbreak
Terry | 05 Jan 2009
One patient, one room, one bed, one sink goes the infection control rhyme. That was until a Pseudomonas aeruginosa outbreak between December 2004 and March 2006 at Toronto General Hospital killed 12 transplant patients.
The issue: tall, high pressure 'gooseneck' sinks drove water straight into the drain hole of the sink without getting water into the basin.
The problem: sludge in the bottom of the sink containing Pseudomonas aeruginosa was splashed out of the drain when the high pressure water hit it and transported around the room when people washed their hands.
The solution: Who knows best on this one? The doctor? The Infection Control Practitioner? The epidemiologist? The engineer?
The answer is likely all of the above.
First things first
Design is important and needs to be first. Before cost, before space, before time, before everything else, things need to be designed and evaluated. Things seem to get designed these days to fill a space, or fit along a wall, or to be this tall by this wide, and once the right ratio of tall-ness to wide-ness is achieved, the evaluation is over.
Design is how it works, not how it looks.
