Impact report: 30+ years with Silentia screens

Founded in 1989 by Dag and Örjan Göranson, Silentia’s vision was clear: to design a hygienic patient privacy alternative that emphasized functional design and longevity. More than 30 years later, Silentia has emerged as the leading solution for hygienic healthcare privacy, challenging the conventional use of textile curtains with the data to back it up.

In this blog, we will delve deeper into the comparative resource costs of screens versus curtains, and showcase actionable data that supports the early vision of our founders.

Using information collected from hospitals, lifecycle assessments, and digital product tracking, we will explore data at scale and reveal the substantial savings in financial and environmental resources that are realized with a Silentia privacy solution that has stood the test of time.

Origins of Silentia

In 1989, brothers Dag and Örjan Göranson resolved to address the “elephant in the room” that plagued hospitals around the world – the privacy curtains – with what would become known as the Silentia Screen System.

At first, a Silentia privacy screen seems simple, a privacy barrier with hard and cleanable surfaces. However, it represents decades of uncompromising focus on quality, functional design, and the long-term perspective.

By designing products with components that can be repaired or upgraded, Silentia ensures that the screens adapt and endure even as equipment and technology evolve in the clinical environment. This commitment to quality and intelligent design has proven beneficial to customers worldwide for decades.

Now, using curtain and laundering frequency data, provided by two Danish hospitals, we are able to expand on this comparison to include data on waste, electricity, and wastewater generation.

Data gathered from the hospitals show that an average disposable curtain weighs 2 kg / 2.2 lbs, and an average textile curtain weighs around 6 kg / 13.2 lbs. To assess the impact per laundering, we are using an lifecycle assessment (LCA) on industrial laundering from the European Textile Services Association (2000).

Using the data above, we can gauge the amount of resources our screens save per quarter compared to curtains. We can also evaluate the impact at scale if a hospital decides to do a complete replacement of all textile patient privacy.

The longevity and scale of the Silentia screen solution at Central Hospital Växjö made us wonder…

What if they had used textile curtains instead of privacy screens?

Using the resource costs referenced from the Danish hospitals, we can build a representative scenario to evaluate the resources Central Hospital Växjö has saved by choosing Silentia screens.

In our scenario, we will assume the curtains would have been laundered or exchanged once every quarter. (For simplification, we are not considering the curtain rails or the lifetime of the textile curtains, nor are we evaluating the labor, logistics, and transport required to dispose of or launder curtains.)