R.I. firm launches The PatientPod

PROVIDENCE – The PatientPod, a new device to improve hospital patient safety, made its official debut on June 7 at the R.I. Economic Development Corporation headquarters.

The device, which can clip onto a bedrail, wheelchair, or walker, provides patients with hand hygiene tools as well as a place to keep personal items in a germ-free environment to avoid potential infection.

Nationally, hospital-acquired infections kill about 100,000 people a year - more than breast cancer, car accidents, and AIDS combined, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The PatientPod was developed by Pat Mastors, a former TV news anchor. She was motivated to develop the device following the death of her father in 2006 as a result of complications from a hospital-acquired infection.

“We wanted to create something transformational,” Mastors said. “We started by asking: if hand hygiene is so important in the hospital, why is it that everyone else can reach the hand sanitizer – except the patient?”

Mastors’ company, Pear Health LLC of East Greenwich, partnered with Fuzion Design of Pawtucket to develop the product prototypes. A military version of the PatientPod is now in development.

GOJO Industries of Akron, Ohio, the inventors of Purell hand sanitizer, are also partners with Pear Health, providing its hand sanitizer as part of the package.

In addition, the Atlanta-based Healthcare Team Training, a national hospital consulting firm, now features PatientPod as part of its training.

“We had been searching for a product that embodies the patient-centered behaviors we train with [as part of] our program,” said Steve Powell, Healthcare Team Training CEO. “The PatientPod helps hard-wire those behaviors, building towards true, lasting culture change.”

In trials conducted with patients and caregivers, 100 percent of caregivers survey said that if hospitalized, they would want the PatientPod for themselves.

Kent Hospital CEO Sandra Coletta enthusiastically endorsed the product. she has made it available for free to all patients of Kent’s Affinity Physicians medical group who choose elective surgery at Kent Hospital.

Other patients can purchase it with a 10 percent discount at the hospital’s gift shop. “My nurses are going to be lining up outside the gift shop to purchase their own PatientPod,” Coletta said.

For more information about PatientPod, go to ThePatientPod.com. Customers can purchase the device online.