Improving C-Tube productivity and durability

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KwickScreen believes that every nurse and every patient has the right to be confident in their safety in a hospital. Patients should feel confident that they are entering a hygienic, safe space where their welfare is the top priority. Nurses should have equipment that can make their lives easier so they can focus on patients. The NHS uses curtains in wards to provide patient privacy. Collectively they use ~500,000 curtains/year in a market worth £150million/year to KwickScreen. Disposable curtains are incredibly damaging to the environment as they require substantial quantities of plastic and are incinerated after a couple weeks of use. This regime has four consequences: (1) ~70kgCO2e/bed/year is produced from disposal/replacement; (2) costs of ~£638/bed/year are incurred, which encourages hospitals to reduce the change-frequency; (3) Healthcare-associated infection risk increases because patients inherit a used curtain; (4) additional time is allocated to servicing instead of patients. KwickScreen products are designed to be long lasting and easy to clean in-situ, making them a much better choice for the environment and to save cost long-term.During a recent survey conducted by UCLH, 80% of existing end users (hospital staff) agree/strongly agree that KwickScreen products are easy to operate, environmentally friendly, and provide an additional layer of defence against infection control with a physical barrier.KwickScreen's retractable screens are made possible by its proprietary split tube extendable members, called C-Tubes. These tubes are retractable/rollable. They provide both horizontal and vertical support for the partition screens when extended to any length from 0 to 3.2m.In this project, KwickScreen will partner with the Newton Gateway to Mathematics, KwickScreen to develop a model of the physical properties of C-Tubes from first principles. This ground-up model of C-Tubes will help determine how to improve C-Tubes' endurance. The model will be used to inform material selection and manufacturing processes going forward for the next generation of C-Tubes. KwickScreen will additionally partner with the National Physical Laboratory to characterise the failure modes for existing C-Tubes. New durability tests will be designed and the information these tests generate will be used to improve the current generation of C-Tubes. These practical tests will feed into the first principles model and create synergies that would otherwise not be possible for any of the consortium members alone.