French hospitals adopt Polytex’s tech to combat contamination

Over the past twelve months, Polytex has won contracts at major French hospitals in Rouen, Rennes, Pithiviers, Dax, Poissy, Ajaccio and at a large hospital laundry service in the Paris region. This is in addition to the eight hospitals and a pharmaceutical industrial site in various parts of the country, which have already installed Polytex’s workwear and scrubs management solution.

The Polytex solution is fully automated and enables hands-free dispensing and collecting of individual uniforms. The system itself is sealed, keeping garments in a clean environment that is opened only by laundry professionals during collection and restocking. The system is available on a 24/7 basis and often installed at multiple locations enabling staff to receive and return garments in seconds, thereby avoiding unnecessary crowding.

Refilling the machines with fresh clothing is very quick and takes only a couple of minutes.

The units can also be moved to special temporary wards dedicated to infectious diseases like COVID-19. The Polytex automated system is backed by a centralised cloud-based management and monitoring applications for end-to-end tracking.

There are currently over 3,000 Polytex units operating in 20 countries, including the US, France, Germany, Spain, and Israel, alongside countries in eastern Europe and Asia.

“In the past year we have nearly doubled our presence in France as the global pandemic has made hygiene an even more critical issue for hospitals,” said Yariv Matzliach, CEO of Polytex. He added that “France is currently one of our largest and strategic markets in Europe and has tremendous growth potential.”

“Polytex’s technology system helped to simplify the distribution of workwear in the hospital and led to a 40% reduction in expenses on uniforms,” said Bernard Loulier, Laundry Manager at the Centre Hospitalier Regional d’Orleans (CHR), the largest hospital in Orleans. He noted that the actual volume of workwear was reduced as were the amount of storage space needed. The first Polytex station in Orleans was installed at the 5,000-staff hospital in 2016. The hospital currently has ten stations installed for dispensing and return of uniforms.