Business Incubator Spins Off Hand Hygiene Start Up

(U.S. Centers for Disease Control)

HanGenix, a recently formed start up enterprise in Boston, Massachusetts, is the first company to be spun out of a new business incubator program from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), a consortium of teaching hospitals and engineering schools, also in Boston.

HanGenix focuses on reducing hospital acquired infections (HAI) by installing comprehensive hand hygiene solutions that remind clinicians to perform proper hand hygiene and document their compliance.  The company’s technology solution is based on an ultrasound system for monitoring, reminding, and capturing data with on hand hygiene compliance patient care areas. HanGenix and CIMIT have establish two trial sites for the system.

HAIs — also called healthcare associated infections — are defined as infections not present and without evidence of incubation at the time of admission to a health care setting. They are estimated to occur in five percent of all hospitalizations in the United States.

HanGenix is the first academic/commercial collaboration started through CIMIT’s Accelerator Program, established by the consortium to speed the commercialization and implementation of technologies into patient care. The program supports technological innovations that can be handed off to industry within 12 to 18 months, through financing, licensing, market analysis, and other assistance.