Student's Self-Disinfecting Door Handle For Hospitals

Rayvon Stewart’s invention is hailed as a symbol of the Caribbean’s growing science and technology talent pool.

Credit: Rayvon Stewart

When the Jamaican university student Rayvon Stewart invented a workable model for a door handle that could disinfect itself after every touch, it was celebrated as a potential game-changer for hospitals, hotels and other businesses, with promising implications for controlling the spread of disease, reports The Guardian.

Stewart, now 30, was just 23 and a student at Jamaica’s University of Technology when he conceptualised the pioneering ultra-violet self-sanitising door handle model, he calls Xermosol, which he says can kill 99.9% of pathogens but is safe for people and animals. Since then he has been working to bring the product, patented under the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Patent Cooperation Treaty, to market, winning Jamaica’s Prime Minister’s National Youth Award and the Commonwealth Health Innovations Awards in the process.

Self-sanitising door handle | Credit: Rayvon Stewart

Dr Camille-Ann Thoms-Rodriguez, a University of the West Indies consultant microbiologist, said that, while the invention did not replace the need for World Health Organisation cleaning guidelines in hospitals, Stewart’s smart self-sanitising door handle was an innovative tool that can be used alongside others, for infection control.

The St Kitts Nevis Observer reports that at a recent launch event, Alison Drayton, assistant secretary-general of CARICOM, called it a “meaningful solution” and a “life-saving design that fits our reality.”