Product Design Showcase

PRODUCT DESIGN SHOWCASE

The Technology Behind the Products A NURSING HOMES/LONG TERM CARE MANAGEMENT SAMPLING Long-term care is a product-rich service. It's possible that no other sector in healthcare uses such a wide array of products, ranging from high-tech cardiac-care devices to furniture to food to wound dressings. Often overlooked, though, is the sheer amount of research effort and expense that underlies many of these products. [For a look at a full-blown research lab devoted to incontinence pad research, for example, see the story on SCA Hygiene's operation: "How One Manufacturer Takes On the Challenge of Incontinence, " August 1999, p. 50.]

Recently, Nursing Homes/Long Term Care Management focused on a sampling of particularly innovative new products and asked their manufacturers to describe the research-and-development process behind them. These are by no means the only products in the field deserving such attention, but they offer a powerful illustration of the thought and hard work that go into the long-term care technology that steadily improves resident care. Caliwel Paint-Antimicrobial Wall and Ceiling Covering Alis A. Yeterian, President, Alistagen Corp.: "Our chairman, Bryan Glynson, is of Greek-Italian descent, and I grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Why is this relevant? Because in that area of the world, you very commonly see people whitewashing their homes. Whitewash contains calcium hydroxide, which acts as a disinfectant. I remember never being sick as a child because our father was always whitewashing our homes. The problem is that whitewash, or lime, turns to chalk in three weeks and loses its disinfectant effect. The question was, would it be possible to encapsulate calcium hydroxide so that the effect would last much longer? Many companies have tried, and the fact that we succeeded, I consider a gift.