This after a pilot project to improve hand-washing compliance in a small number of hospitals. NYT has the story: before the project, 50% compliance; now, 75%.
Why is this interesting? In the US there's 90,000 deaths due to health-care-associated infections every year. Unwashed hands are a major vector for these infections. It's a multi-billion dollar problem, again just in the US.
This short report [pdf] on the project is interesting throughout. The numbers are amazing, the final goal (90+% compliance) is still in the distance, and the practical approaches to getting there are at turns fascinating and bizarre.
Lean Six Sigma approach to hand washing? Really?
The Vancouver Art Gallery occupies a leftover courthouse from 1905. Vancouver's main public library branch is a big, practical box full of books with a nonsensical facade patterned after the Colosseum.
It could be so much worse.
Meet Edmonton's new Art Gallery of Alberta. It's not a Gehry ripoff, honest! The architect who designed it spent much less than a decade in Gehry's office. (Via Colby Cosh).
