Technology Group Launches Hand Hygiene Start-Up

A recently formed Boston-based startup called HanGenix is the first company to be spun out of the new Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) Accelerator program. HanGenix is focused on reducing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) by installing comprehensive hand hygiene solutions that remind clinicians to perform proper hand hygiene and document their compliance.

HAIs are among the most urgent health and economic problems affecting more than 2 million people each year. Treatment costs for HAIs are approaching $5 billion annually in the United States alone. More significantly, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that nearly 100,000 deaths are caused by HAIs every year. Proper hand hygiene is the best way to reduce the serious economic and health impact of these infections.

HanGenix represents the first academic/commercial collaboration by CIMIT through the recently launched CIMIT Accelerator Program, a concerted effort by the consortium to speed the commercialization and implementation of innovative technologies into patient care.

The CIMIT Accelerator program facilitates technological innovations that can be handed off to industry within twelve to eighteen months. This is a relatively short time, so the CIMIT Accelerator team works very intimately with the project teams to not only advance the technology, but also to develop and execute a complete strategy for getting the solution to into practice. In addition to investing cash, CIMIT provides a significant amount of facilitation which includes determining the best way to spin out the technology (licensing, creating a new company, etc.), as well as doing market, competitive, financial and intellectual property analysis.

In creating the new company HanGenix, CIMIT recruited a start-up team with more than 60 years combined experience in bringing innovation to healthcare. The technology solution is based on an integrated system for monitoring, reminding and capturing data with respect to hand hygiene compliance within zones of patient care. The companys technology was developed, built, and tested at MGH and CIMIT. Already, HanGenix and CIMIT have been able to establish two large-scale trail sites and have verbal commitments from two more sites.

CIMIT is a clinically-based consortium of Boston-area hospitals and engineering schools, including Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Womens Hospital, MIT, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston University, Boston University Medical Campus, Childrens Hospital Boston, Newton Wellesley Hospital, Northeastern University, Partners HealthCare, and VA Boston Healthcare System, CIMIT supports translational research by multidisciplinary teams for medical device and clinical technology system applications, and through seed funding and facilitation attracts world-class clinicians, scientists and engineers working together with industry and government to accelerate the clinical impact of innovative technologies.

HanGenix offers a solution that provides a reminder the moment proper hand hygiene has not been performed, having an immediate positive impact on hand hygiene compliance.