Hygienic Hospital Screens
SUMMARY
Michael Korn: Chief Innovation Officer and Founder of KwickScreen
Michael gained an MEng in Manufacturing Engineering from Cambridge University, then worked in industry for a year before gaining a scholarship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to study for a Masters in Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. During this course Michael won Design and Entrepreneurship awards from the RCA and the Business School at Imperial. This funded the start of KwickScreen which came out of his final year project. Michael has spent the last 12 years in the field of infection control and space management and has been focussed on improving and refining the KwickScreen product range as well as growing the company. KwickScreen designs and manufactures the best flexible privacy solutions in the world. Our portable, retractable partition screens provide innovative solutions that bridge the gap between functional industrial design and artistic interiors, enabling users to create private, personalised spaces adaptable to multiple uses, primarily in the healthcare market.
Michael Korn
Chief Innovation Officer and Founder of KwickScreen
The company had a turnover of £1.2m y/e March 2019, £2.2m y/e March 2020, and shipped £1m in April 2020 and anticipate revenues of >£5m this year and continued growth for the foreseeable future as we launch more products that improve the patient space.
Applying Empathetic Engineering Principles
Privacy in hospitals is a challenge and often wards need to be reconfigured quickly to accommodate patients in a mixed environment and with very different needs. Hanging curtains from the ceiling is less flexible and the risk of hospital acquired infections from the use of curtains is costly and environmentally wasteful to manage effectively. A semi-rigid partition that can be wheeled easily and deployed to wrap around a patient’s bed, with easily wipeable surfaces would be ideal. The key to KwickScreen’s success is the use of an innovative extending upper and lower support, that unrolls initially flat from within the uprights but then takes on a rigid curved profile that holds the upper and lower edges of the screen material.
This technology is used for military and aerospace applications, including on the Mars landers. Michael saw the opportunity to apply this creatively, taking an advanced technology from one industry and applying it for a wholly different use. Prototyping and testing with healthcare professionals as well as patients and their carers, was essential to understand not only the detailed requirements, but working with them to co-create a system for rapidly reconfiguring of hospital wards. KwickScreen is also being used in offices too, enabling companies to create very flexible environments too. The customisation and personalisations that’s possible of the screens enables users to adapt them to their environment and also come up with innovative new uses.
