Smarterials Technology GmbH develops surgical gloves that reduce the risk of injury and infection for healthcare personnel.
The background is about half a million needlestick injuries in the health care sector every year in Germany alone. As a result, hundreds of doctors and nursing staff become infected with hepatitis B/C and HIV every year despite wearing gloves.
Smarterials develops coating processes for latex materials as well as latex particle composites, which serve as base materials for innovative gloves. In order to quantify the properties of the product, the spin-off of the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing as part of a consortium is developing novel test methods for assessing the quality of medical gloves. In this way, new types of gloves are developed and established which offer high comfort and drastically reduce the risk of injury in the operating theatre.
