How A Jamaican Student Invented A Self-disinfecting Door Handle For Hospitals: ‘design That Fits Reality’

When nan Jamaican assemblage student Rayvon Stewart invented a workable exemplary for a doorway grip that could disinfect itself aft each touch, it was hailed arsenic a imaginable gamechanger for hospitals, hotels and different businesses, pinch promising implications for controlling nan dispersed of disease, peculiarly during pandemics for illustration Covid-19.

Speaking astatine a caller merchandise launch, Alison Drayton, adjunct secretary-general of nan Caribbean Community (Caricom), a 15-member bloc of Caribbean countries, described nan invention arsenic a “meaningful solution” for nan region and a “life-saving creation that fits our reality”.

Stewart, now 30, was conscionable 23 and a student astatine Jamaica’s University of Technology erstwhile he conceptualised nan pioneering ultra-violet self-sanitising doorway grip model, he calls Xermosol, which he says tin termination 99.9% of pathogens but is safe for group and animals. Since past he has been moving to bring nan product, patented under nan World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Patent Cooperation Treaty, to market, winning Jamaica’s Prime Minister’s National Youth Award and nan Commonwealth Health Innovations Awards successful nan process.

Today, his invention is celebrated arsenic a awesome of nan Caribbean’s increasing subject and exertion talent pool, pinch Drayton describing it arsenic a “powerful look of what happens erstwhile invention is rooted successful intent and fuelled by resilience”.

Stewart grew up successful a mediocre family pinch his grandmother, successful nan agrarian farming organization of Mount Prospect. “Even though times were tough, we ne'er really thought astir that. We knew that we had thing to do arsenic a family,” he said. The package technologist and his relative were nan first successful their family to spell to university.

There, he discovered his emotion of inventing and entered a title pinch his first idea: 3D modeling package that would let group to virtually fresh apparel earlier purchasing online. When he started volunteering successful a hospital, his passion for invention became astir solving a problem.

A self-cleaning doorway grip invented by Rayvon Stewart. Photograph: Courtesy Rayvon Stewart

“I saw really patients were suffering, nan assistance that they needed, and really difficult it was for nan nurses,” he said. This, he added was nan inspiration for Xermosol.

Dr Camille-Ann Thoms-Rodriguez, a University of nan West Indies advisor microbiologist, said that, while nan invention did not switch nan request for World Health Organisation cleaning guidelines successful hospitals, Stewart’s smart self-sanitising doorway grip was an innovative instrumentality that tin beryllium utilized alongside others, for infection control.

“We’re very proud of him,” she said. “A batch of nan invention that we spot successful healthcare is often from a first-world state wherever location are much resources … but it doesn’t mean that we don’t person bully ideas here,” she added.

Kirk-Anthony Hamilton, co-founder of Tech-Beach Retreat, a Caribbean-based tech level that connects innovators, entrepreneurs and investors done summits, programmes and investment, said location was a increasing desire successful nan region to tackle eager tech projects.

“Young group successful nan Caribbean are seeing what opportunities they’re missing retired on, and they want to beryllium a portion of it. They’re reference stories astir a feline successful a car shed coming up pinch a concept, and 2 years in, nan institution is making $50m a year,” he said.

This, he added, was challenging nan conception of occurrence being constricted to professions specified arsenic medicine and law. “Now we’re knowing … that location is this monolithic abstraction to run successful that affords you moreover greater levels of opportunity and entree and that you tin beryllium solving problems beyond nan scope of your geographic boundaries, utilizing technology.”

In nan broader section of integer technology, businesses specified arsenic nan package improvement institution BairesDev, which has a world workforce of much than 4,000, said it saw a 400% summation successful applications from developers successful nan Caribbean betwixt 2020 and 2024.

One imaginable mentation for this, nan company’s head of talent acquisition, Felipe Turra, said, was nan accrued request for package engineers during nan Covid pandemic arsenic lockdowns drove innovation. “Companies started saying, hey … I request to create caller applications, because group can’t time off home,” he said, adding that nan Caribbean being mostly aligned to nan US, some successful position of connection and culture, made it a bully fresh for its US-based clients.

For Stewart, nan displacement successful innovations and expanding integer talent is “challenging nan story that location isn’t awesome, life-changing exertion successful nan Caribbean”.