Clean hands

Simone Passerini is excited as she takes off her VR goggles. The University Hospital Zurich employee has just walked around a patient room in virtual reality. What makes the ViRTUE trainer so useful is how it makes germs like bacteria and viruses visible. Hugo Sax’s hospital team hopes that this will make hand hygiene more intuitive – for the safety of patients.

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The door handle is red. And after the greeting, the patient’s hands also turn red. The ViRTUE virtual reality trainer for hand hygiene gives Simone Passerini a very visual experience of how germs are spread when we forget to disinfect our hands. The trained nurse is confident: “Those who have experienced the simulation gain a lasting heightened awareness of the issue of hand hygiene.”

For Simone Passerini, this is already the case anyway: she is working as part of the research team led by Professor Hugo Sax, Director of Hospital Hygiene, to examine what factors affect the behavior of hospital staff when it comes to avoiding infections.

Simply being aware of the risk of infecting patients is not enough, says Hugo Sax: “The biggest barrier is that germs are invisible.” Virtual reality will hopefully change this. “Our simulation shows clearly how germs can be spread in situations where hygiene is lacking, bringing about the sorts of behavioral changes psychology has taught us about,” says Hugo Sax.

Thanks to a donation from entrepreneur Hans-Peter Wild to the University Hospital Zurich Foundation, ViRTUE simulations can now be made even more realistic and their impact studied scientifically. Professor Andreas Kunz’s team from the Innovation Center Virtual Reality at ETH Zurich is contributing its technological expertise to the project.

In the future, all hospital staff should have the opportunity to benefit from the experience with VR goggles – for the benefit of the patients. “The virtual hand hygiene trainer has helped make University Hospital Zurich the world’s safest hospital – and has made ViRTUE a model for training people about hand hygiene,” says Hugo Sax.

100% financed

Dr. Hans-Peter Wild