“Touchless technology has become disruptive technology to convert high-touch surfaces to touchless ones across industries and sectors.”
Contactless solutions are rapidly replacing buttons, keypads, and controls. Interfacing with machinery, equipment, and high-touch public surfaces has changed overnight: the COVID-19 pandemic most certainly accelerated this demand, while innovations in touchless technology have enabled giant leaps forward too.
Touchless technology is at the forefront of human-machine interface and rewriting the concepts of integration, interaction, and intelligence with the power of digital transformation. It enables touchless interactions with user interfaces for simpler, more convenient inputs.
Solving many of the world’s problems through delivering innovative touchless technology, NZ Technologies have established itself as a pioneer in this field. This Vancouver business has revolutionised and democratised contactless technology to create a better tomorrow today. Its proprietary technology enables touchless interactions with user interfaces with target applications in healthcare and other industries.
NZ Technologies is a technology company specialising in designing and manufacturing advanced Human Machine Interaction (HMI) products with applications currently in minimally invasive surgeries and high-touch surface areas. The company strives to revolutionise modern Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), taking touchless to a new dimension.
GET IN TOUCH
Dr. Nima Ziraknejad founded the company in 2009, first as a consultancy and then in 2014 as a manufacturer. The business was born from Dr. Ziraknejad’s doctoral thesis while studying machine vision and robotics at the University of British Columbia on the Vancouver campus.
For his thesis, Dr. Ziraknejad developed a prototype system for automatically adjustable headrests for vehicles to mitigate whiplash injuries in accidents. The system used head-tracking technology to track an occupant’s head position in real time and adjust the headrests to protect seat occupants from otherwise severe neck injuries. The prototype’s success ignited Dr. Ziraknejad’s inspiration.
NZ Technologies was established to bring advanced touchless technology to various industries and applications.
Dr. Ziraknejad shares: “I’m an inventor by nature, and I have devoted my life to technological innovation, taking sector-specific problems and transforming them into practical, commercialised solutions.”
Recognising the potential for touchless technology and its applications in the medical field, Dr. Ziraknejad consulted and collaborated with thought leaders in the field of minimally invasive surgery. In collaboration with Vancouver General Hospital (VHG) radiologists, Dr. Ziraknejad invented TIPSO, (which is an acronym for Touchless Interaction with PACS in Sterile Operations). PACS (an acronym for Picture Archiving and Communication System) isa popular radiology image server installed in all Canadian hospitals.
“TIPSO enables surgeons with touchless interactions while they are scrubbed in the operating room, saving them surgery time by 10-15% and bringing the focus back to the surgeon’s normal task control,” Dr. Ziraknejad explains his invention. “It puts a surgeon in full control touchlessly in a sterile environment.”
Designed by doctors for doctors, TIPSO interfaces utilise 3d sensors and proprietary algorithms to interpret a surgeon’s hand and finger movements over-the-drape to navigate and manipulate live and historical imaging records in a touchless and seamless fashion.
Previously, surgeons needed to study radiology images on a computer, using a mouse and keyboard. This meant taking off their surgical garments, requiring doctors to sterilise their hands and don new surgical garments, delaying procedures and raising the risk of potential infection for patients.
Today, TIPSO is the company’s flagship family of products and is commercially available. Says Dr Ziraknejad: “Creating transformative change in the healthcare sector is my passion. I am constantly exploring new horizons and connecting the technologies we have invented to more practical applications in the medical field.
THE PANDEMIC
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for contactless solutions for high-touch surfaces, such as elevators and bank ATMs. NZ Technologies engineered a solution called HoverTap, to bring touchless technology to elevators.
HoverTap transforms existing panels, LCD displays and other high-touch surfaces into contactless. “It is a novel sensing technology designed to replace touch-based human-input devices in the public space – effectively eliminating the risk of infectious disease transmission through physical contact,” Dr. Ziraknejad explained about his breakthrough product. “The HoverTap touchfree sensor can detect the 3d position of a user’s fingertip at a distance from a surface, allowing users to interact with physical buttons and touchscreens alike – through simple touchless taps and gestures.
Touchless technology has become disruptive technology to convert high-touch surfaces to touchless ones across industries and sectors.
NZ Technologies believes people should not use high-touch surfaces for fear of germs and infections. “Touchless tech is a safety consideration as it can mitigate infections and cross infections and robustly boost society’s health for now and in the future. This technology is an effective method to safeguard societies.”
TIPSO, HoverTap and NZ Technologies are transforming how we interact with the world around us. Safer, hygienic, simpler: the future is today.
