83445IsoBarrier: A sustainable, affordable transparent PPE barrier to control the spread of infection in hospitals.ClosedSmall Business Research InitiativeInnovate UKSince the start of the pandemic, demand for transparent PPE barriers has dramatically increased due to them allowing hospitals to utilise bed capacity where social distancing between beds is impossible. Currently, many of the ~500,000 of NHS hospital beds only use curtains for separation, which provide little infection control as they are only disposed of every 3-6 months?long after they have become contaminated with bacteria. Furthermore, 90% of curtains used in NHS hospitals are made of disposable polypropylene, disposed of by incineration or landfill which is damaging to the environment. Therefore, a sustainable PPE partition system is required to keep NHS hospitals running efficiently as they continue to treat Covid-19 patients and to reduce transmission of all HCAIs in the future. Korn has been designing and manufacturing opaque partition screens for privacy and infection control for the last 10 years, but since February 2020, 90% of hospitals have been requesting transparent versions of our screens. Our screens appeal to many NHS trusts as they are portable, flexible, easy to clean and customisable; however, the transparent Kwickscreens are currently unsustainable and inaccessible to around 50% of NHS trusts: the PVC sheeting we currently use is not eco-friendly, and they do not meet the fire retardant standards of some potential customers. They are also inaccessible to those who cannot currently afford to buy KwickScreen products in bulk to replace their entire infrastructure of curtains and tracks. Therefore, IsoBarrier aims to design solutions which will tackle these issues in two main ways. Firstly, we will find an alternative sustainable material for the screens, which is transparent, fire retardant and environmentally friendly. Secondly, we will investigate ways in which we can incorporate this material into both our current range of products, and a new significantly cheaper system which can be used alongside the existing curtains providing patient privacy. We will then look at ways to commercialise these two solutions, for all NHS hospitals and internationally.