Don’t touch! – Levelling up your touch functionality

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Jun 23, 2022

The medical market has embraced and recognised the benefits of designing and developing medical devices with a display interface. Simplicity, streamlined, and speed to name a few. However, and the clue is in the name here, touchscreen technology has historically relied on the need for touch. 

Yet, in the medical market that can come with its challenges, as medical professionals may need to carry out their procedure with gloved hands. 

At Anders, our interface solutions therefore need to consider ‘gloved touch’, but also go beyond this to ensure there is a customised solution that can consider varying types of gloves.

On the flip side of this scenario is the need for touchless technology, which has skyrocketed across all industries, but in particular the medical market as safety considerations has forced us all to rethink our interactions.

Medical devices need to be used with gloved hands

But it’s safe to say that in whatever way you need your medical devices to operate the need for accurate touch and the quick recording of data is forever present.

Reliable Gesture Control using Different Glove Types

Picture this… how many times a day do you think medical practitioners put on gloves and then take them back off again? 

How many different pairs of gloves do you think they use in their day-to-day procedures? How many different types of gloves do you think they need to have that may be job specific? 

We don’t know the exact answers to these questions either, but we can imagine that it will be a lot, especially in the post COVID world that we live in.

To carry out many of these routines, they will use a medical device with display technology, which is why we customise our medical touchscreens to adapt to the use of varying glove styles.

medical gloves can be used with Anders touchscreens

When a finger meets a capacitative touchscreen’s surface, it changes electric fields and impacts the capacitance. Simply put, we optimise the Capacitive Touchscreen (PCAP) to support gesture/multi-touch functionality with the various glove types.

Touchless Technology

It will come as no surprise to learn that enquiries from our medical customers in relation to touchless technology has more than doubled in the past 18-months. Everyone is aware that the main benefit of a touchless user interface (UI) is the creation of a non-touch environment, and the reduction in physical contact points. Bring COVID and the need for a sterile ecosystem into the equation and the result is an acceleration in the development of touchless UI’s.

There have already been advancements in areas such as voice-controlled UI’s, retinal scanners, and palm recognition (hover) technologies, that all help to reduce physical contact points for many medical functions.

It is certainly an exciting time for touchless UIs, which promise increased accuracy, sensitivity, and enhanced useability.

We are excited to explore the intriguing possibilities hover touch has to offer. We are already working with our portfolio of leading suppliers to bring this promising new technology to the market.


But, as a new level of anxiety already exists within our healthcare environments, we need to take into consideration the increased focus to ensure equipment is always kept clean and sterile. Adding anti-viral protection to traditional touchscreens is a very popular option for the here and now to keep anyone who comes into contact with the display protected.

Want to discuss your Medical design requirements? Get in touch!