PHC Ventures and NZTech Collaborate to Transform Health Care Through Touchless Technology
In health care environments, every touchpoint carries risk. Traditional high-touch surfaces — from elevator buttons to surgical monitors — can harbor pathogens and increase the risk of infection transmission. This is especially critical in operating rooms, intensive care units, and other sterile environments, where even minor breaches in infection control can have serious consequences.
Providence Health Care Ventures (PHCV) and NZ Technologies Inc. (NZTech) are pleased to announce a collaboration to address just that — the pervasive infection risks posed by traditional high-touch surfaces in health care settings. This partnership aims to advance health care technologies and enhance patient care by fundamentally reimagining how people interact with medical equipment and environments.
Together, the organizations will establish a Living Lab, designed as a real-world environment to deploy, evaluate, and refine touchless and sterile interaction systems in clinical workflows. This approach directly tackles the contamination challenges that plague everything from elevator buttons to critical surgical equipment.
Next-Generation Clinical Interfaces
The collaboration enables clinicians, patients, and visitors to experience advanced interaction systems in real health care settings. By combining gesture controls and touch interaction, NZTech’s technologies are engineered to operate seamlessly in both sterile and semi-sterile environments.
HoverTap™ is a next-generation sensing technology that brings both touch and touchless interaction to any screen or surface within reach of patients or clinicians — from elevators and kiosks to bedside monitors. By enabling users to interact through traditional touch or mid-air gestures, it reduces the risk of contamination while maintaining ease of use.
Extending this, TIPSO AirPad™ integrates touchless control into the operating room, giving surgeons a portable interface to manipulate medical images and control equipment from a distance, all without breaking sterility. Unlike traditional high-touch interfaces, these systems can work through gloves, drapes, and liquids, minimizing the need for sterilization and reducing infection risks.
Real-World Validation Through Partnership
“We are excited to partner with PHCV to explore how sterile and touchless interaction technologies can transform patient care,” said Nima Ziraknejad, CEO of NZTech. “By leveraging PHCV’s clinical expertise and network, we can validate our interaction technologies in a real-world hospital environment, accelerating our mission to enhance infection control, improve workflow efficiency, and elevate the health care experience for patients and providers alike.”
“We see tremendous potential in technologies that reimagine how people interact with health care systems,” said Brian Simmers, President of PHCV. “Working with NZTech gives us the opportunity to explore cutting-edge sterile and touchless solutions that could make hospitals safer, more efficient, and ultimately more human-centered for both patients and care teams.”
About NZ Technologies
NZ Technologies Inc. (NZTech) is a technology innovation company specializing in designing and manufacturing touch-free Human Machine Interaction (HMI) products for the medical industry.
Media Contact
Nima Ziraknejad
CEO, NZ Technologies
nima@nztech.ca