It would be great if you could put one in every patient room, and the doctor would put his hands inside for 10 seconds. Much easier on the skin than the alcohol usually used.
It would be nice if they could wash their hands using the current technology, which is wildly effective. Will this new device be more socially acceptable or address whatever the reason is that they don't currently adopt the simple, well-established and lifesaving procedure of hand washing?
That article pretty much concludes that hand-washing doesn't work, not only of because of practical factors (hospital staff cannot possible stick to the regimen of hand-washing that would be required), but also because even the strictest cleaning leaves enough bacteria or viruses on the hands for transmission to happen.
My impression, from the article, was that if the strict washing procedure was followed, then hand washing was effective. Anyway, it is clear from the article that using alcohol gel works and is much more convenient and yet compliance is still not great.
Depends on what hands are washed with. Semmelweis used what we call chlorine bleach, Lister carbolic acid (dangerous stuff). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignac_Semmelweis Semmelweis's strategy reduced childbed fever in his ward by 90%. (Then he got all pompous about it and was ignored ... unlike Lister.)
Since busy people can't wash all the time, a device like the one in the article would make antisepsis a lot harder to resist.
