Outstanding Contribution!

We daily see hundreds of stories about the self-less service and sacrifice by health workers, it is no wonder we call them COVID Warriors. While they are fighting this dreaded pandemic from the front it is very important for the rest of us help them to deal with the pandemic effectively. A group of people decide to help these warriors by make sure that these people are recognised for the effort and literally revealing the person behind the PPE kit or mask.

The idea is very simple yet very effective. As we all know that the Covid warriors are required to cover themselves with a PPE suit which covers them from head to toe which makes them unrecognizable for the patient and their co-workers. This makes communication between them very hard and adds to the already ongoing stressful situation. Now under Project Smile, it allows one to upload smiling picture of the Covid warriors which gets printed on special sticker paper and they can paste it on their PPE suits. This helps to reveal the person behind the mask which actually helps the patient and co-workers recognise them and literally put a smile on their faces.

Project Smile is an initiative created by Redington, supported by HP Indigo and managed by VYSMO technology partner. The sticker photos are printed on high quality HP Indigo presses and enabled by web to print services run by HP Indigo Digital press owners. This enables anybody to upload pictures and name details that gets printed and shipped overnight to the warriors.

Since the launch of Project Smile, printed thousands of smiling pictures of frontline health workers which has really put a smile on their faces and on the faces of the patients too. There are many heart-warming stories of how it had made warriors feel recognised, like Jessy a nurse at a Covid care hospital says “… I saw that now the patients immediately identify us,also it is easy for them now to communicate and share things faster. Seeing my smiling picture on the PPE assures hope and confidence in them. Especially in kids, ladies and old patients,when they see my smiling picture the level of threat decreases, and they feel more comfortable.”

Innovation is an ongoing process and it varied in different shapes, sizes, nature and scale of work. But to really believe in it and having trust on these new ideas it is important to understand that why we need such an idea? We have to believe that every single innovation has the power to bring change. We witnessed such a true story of innovation today where the purpose and passion to bring back the smiles has brought a bigger understanding of responsibility, positivity and also brought the hope among many of those who are either fighting with it or people those who are having a fight against it. Protective suits for medical workers and patients, is a barrier but safety is required. They can’t express from inside the suits and do not feel comfortable during this stressful time. While they put their heart and soul to work, the expression of smile is missing big time.

The whole project is powered by HP Indigo digital printing capabilities and Project Smile has a countrywide presence of printing partners as they are closely associated themselves with this project and they see that this can really help the medical fraternity in big way. Let’s see how they feel to get associated on Project Smile:

Silverpoint Press Private Limited (SPPL) is one of India’s leading commercial printer based in Mumbai and offers high-quality sheetfed and digital facilities for a wide range of products. SPPL offers an online Web2Print facility www.Printnation.in for its corporate and retail customers, providing an online design platform. They also provide online print procurement making it very easy and convenient for hospitals, medical workers to order directly. “Printnation has collaborated with Redington &HP on Project Smile to print stickers which can be pasted on PPE kits for the doctors, trying to support health warriors in these difficult times,” tells Saifee Z Makasarwala of Silverpoint.

Another partner PSP is Clixicle, run by Aditya & Saumya Upadhyaya who started Clixicle as an extension to their family business in photographic printing. At www.clixicle.com, we believe Project Smile is a brilliant initiative powered by HP Indigo to show the faces offront-line warriors behind the PPE suits. They are helping our world get through this tough pandemic situation. To support this initiative, we are offering one-time free face stickers to each of the hospitals across India through our website www.clixicle.com and also any lead that comes through HPs Project smile initiative. And I am hoping within our print-based capacity we can come up with more Ideas that can help front line warriors and bring in more smiles to doctors and patients!” tells Aditya. The founders believe that every memory worth cherishing is worth revisiting on a daily basis and hence aim to bring modern designs in personalized print products.

Another photobook major Nirmal Enterprises from Hisar, has been serving thousands of customers in 12 states and still counting. They have their production units in Hisar (Haryana) with offices in Delhi & Jaipur which functions through modern and latest computerized technology. Talking about the Project Smile, Dinesh Bindal of Nirmal Enterprises said, “Earlier, we were only into photobooks and we were helping our consumers with lot of innovative Photo Solutions. But now with Project Smile, we have reached out to consumers in Medical industry also with a new innovative solution. We hope that the demand of these Photo stickers will increase in the coming times as it is having a very big positive impact on patients and helping the frontline workers in their day to day communication with co-workers. We have taken out more than 70000-80,000 prints in B2 size for this project. We are revealing smiles for those who heal.”

More stories about Project Smile

This simple action helps to comfort both the patents and the frontline warriors. Examining a patient in April, Dr. Sharmila looked at his sad face, he is watching her covered with the PPE kit with just the eyes blinking. How uncertain and scary it must be to watch doctors and nurses walking like astronauts unable to even recognize her own team behind all their personal protective equipment.“If I can’t recognize my staff, I can only imagine how patients must feel having nurses and physicians coming in and not being able to differentiate who is who,” she says. After this incident, the idea came to us through HP: have staff members stick smiling pictures of themselves so that patients can see their faces.

That’s when we decided to go for HP’s Indigo Prints, printed on a special environment-friendly media appropriate for use in sensitive environments like hospitals. A pilot project was undertaken at a few hospitals to gauge the impact on patients and hospital staff. Intensive care unit technicians, environmental services staff, and physical therapists on the orthopaedics unit walked around with photos of themselves easily visible on their protective gear. This pilot and survey helped them a lot to understand the need to adopt it quickly at a next level.

For more details and any enquiry please visit: projectsmiles.in