Using Capacitive Touch Panels With Gloves
To the surprise of many, touchscreen technology was invented long before it became a widespread phenomenon back in the mid-1960s. It wasn’t until the creation of the first-ever Apple iPhone that society became acquainted with finger gestures like swiping, tapping, and pinching on touchscreens on our personal devices.
Soon enough, touchscreens infiltrated every aspect of our lives – it was no longer a novel technology but rather something we expected when we saw screens. We see it with self-checkout counters, mall maps, museum exhibits, and industry-specific machines and devices that serve to improve everyday living and practice.
In healthcare, medical gloves are important. They help all healthcare professionals stay hygienic in the working environment and avoid any cross-contamination of diseases and bodily fluids, but come time to interact with a touch screen, and they can pose problems.
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How Capacitive Touch Panels Work
All types of touch panels consist of three components:
- The touch sensor: Built-in sensors that detect touch using a hand or finger (although their structure will depend on the variety of touch panel)
- The software drivers: The components that help the software work with the touch screen.
- The controller: The hardware circuit that connects the actual device to the touch panel sensors, which then translates to the software drivers.
However, not all touch panels are equal. The most common is the resistive touch screen, which is for devices like kiosks, in-flight entertainment screens, and older devices like camcorders. They’re called “resistive” panels because the resistance or pressure on the screen is what determines the input.
The most familiar type of touch panel to us, though, is the capacitive touch screen. The phone in your hand, the tablet you’ve got on your desk, and the smart appliance you’ve got in your kitchen all likely use the capacitive touch panel. Rather than work based on pressure, the capacitive versions use thin wires to keep an electrical charge going.
The screen itself transforms that electric current when it senses contact with our skin, which holds a charge. In turn, a circuit is created, and a drop in voltage occurs exactly where we’re touching the screen, leading to the touch of a button, the opening of an app, etc.
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Using Capacitive Touch Panels in the Medical Field
Because capacitive touch panels rely on that complete electrical circuit to function properly, using them in the medical field can come with a challenge – how do medical professionals use medical instrument displays with gloves?
It all comes down to the glove. Most capacitive touch screens can operate with gloves that are no thicker than 5mm. Additionally, using textured gloves rather than smooth gloves can provide better responsiveness. Fortunately, most medical gloves, whether nitrile, vinyl or latex are all well under the 5mm thickness threshold allowing designs for capacitive touch panels enabling proper use with these medical gloves.
With touchscreens being such an integral part of operations, from checking in a patient to navigating high-end equipment, it’s a valid and pressing issue that needs to be resolved during the design phase of any new medical application. Considering how fast-paced and urgent the medical work environment typically is, technology should always be fully functioning with no hindrances and delays.
Using Capacitive Touch Panels in Cold Weather
The healthcare industry isn’t the only sector that has issues using capacitive touch panels with gloves. In areas that experience cold and frigid winters, using touch panels if you work outdoors becomes a significant challenge too. While many stores and sellers boast of their touchscreen-friendly gloves, oftentimes – they just don’t work. Similarly to medical latex gloves, the wooly materials used in winter gloves don’t have the properties required to stimulate the screen and create that electrical circuit.
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Solutions for Glove-Friendly Capacitive Touch Panels
If a surgeon is in the middle of a procedure, what happens if they need to use a touch panel to access real-time data or to operate a much-needed surgical tool? And what happens if temperatures are down in the negatives and you work in an indoor-outdoor warehouse environment?
Luckily, the advancements in technology have given us hope, even with gloved hands. With the cold weather, well-made touchscreen gloves can help us interact with capacitive touch screen devices. Proper smart gloves will have conductive fibers woven into the fingers or the entire glove. While regular gloves inhibit the electrostatic transfer, these gloves mimic human skin and promote that transfer.
In medical settings where gloves thicker than 5mm are necessary, capacitive stylus pens offer a similar solution, where the tips are capacitive-compatible and able to interact with these panels by imitating human touch. Beyond the external, manufacturers have also experimented with creating capacitive touch panels specifically for these scenarios. For example, ultra-sensitive panels would be able to pick up on weaker inputs that would detect a gloved hand. Manufacturers and companies have also tested changes in software, where the system is taught to recognize certain gestures or the lower capacitive effect of a gloved touch.
Another alternative is to invest in novel touchscreens, such as infrared one, in medical settings over capacitive touchscreens. While not widely available or affordable for certain practices, these touch panels are extremely reliable when it comes to their gloved touchscreen capabilities. With the premise of an infrared touchscreen based around the interruption of infrared lights, there’s no need to worry about human finger detection.
Closing Remarks
Touchscreens and gloves often clash – they’re frustrating to use together, and it’s not common for industries to find a solution to the problem. Although these struggles might not be apparent to everyone on a day-to-day basis, just one issue with a non-working touch panel could lead to a domino effect of issues that could disrupt critical services.
As capacitive touch panels have become a number one choice for many touchscreen devices, their inability to work seamlessly with gloves of all materials can seem like a roadblock. But with the solutions we have today, including updated technologies and externally compatible devices, we can navigate those disruptions and progress touchscreen-glove compatibility further and further. Soon enough, we’re sure to find a catch-all solution where capacitive touch panels work just as well with gloves as they do with bare fingers.