The Jamaican producers of LifeSavers Wipes erupted in celebration on March 31 when the product won the top prize in global innovations of 2019-2021 at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in Miami, United States.

Having copped the prestigious award, Georgia Crawford Williams and scientists Dr Peter Nelson and Shannon DaCosta are now seeking strategic partners to help transform the product into a global brand.

“We are trying to ensure that we have the right strategic partners so that we can manufacture and distribute. We believe it’s a product that can save lives across the world and so we want to ensure that the partner that we get can actually facilitate the vision that we have for the product,” stated Crawford Williams, the team leader and developmental sociologist, who is also host of Un-Filtered on The Edge 105 FM, one of the two radio stations in the Jamaica Observer Media Group.

LifeSavers Wipes can indicate to users if there are any irregularities in their urine. The specially formulated sheets change colour if it comes in contact with abnormal levels of glucose in the urine, thus indicating the need for medical attention.

“We’re not a medical product; what we are is an early warning device and a monitoring system so that people now having had the knowledge can make the right decisions,” Crawford Williams told the Jamaica Observer.

Noting that the team couldn’t have done it on their own, Crawford Williams said, “One of the persons who helped the most so far is Alanna Kirschner — a director at a local company called Swypz plus — in terms of creating and manufacturing the product so the company could have the samples to send out. We are most appreciative of it. Everything that we know about wipes, Alanna told us because she’s in the wipes industry,” said Crawford Williams.

She also thanked The University of the West Indies (UWI) which, she noted, gave an affordable price for labs. “It was highly discounted. If we had to pay the market rate for labs, it would have been ridiculous,” she said.

“All our investors thus far have been friends and family members, the partners that we have been looking at are international partners and they are not investors, they are strategic partners as it relates to getting the brand out there. So they are manufacturers and distributors of wipes across the world,” she said as she explained the vision.

“We are looking at big entities that have plants all across the world and we’re looking at the best way to work with them. We know that this is a long-haul project. For instance, for a partner to work with you they have to at least test your product for four months to ensure that it is stable, shelf life is there and that sort of thing. We were almost at the point of signing with one the other day but we didn’t get all the terms that we wanted right, so that is where we are in terms of those international partners,” she continued.

Notwithstanding, Crawford Williams admitted, “We are now going to be looking for a little bit more investment as we try to get all our products to where we want them to be.”

Dr Nelson related a bit of the product’s history.

“Georgia came to me with it and I thought it was a really good idea. Then we said, ‘Yes, we’re going to do it.’ But then she disappeared,” said Nelson who is based at the Department of Chemistry at The UWI.

A few years later Crawford Williams came back with the idea and said she also brought another scientist, Shannon DaCosta, on the team.

But Nelson said although the idea was good, they had to invest a lot of work and apply new principles.

“It’s a new idea, so it might be a little bit strange, and new ideas are normally like that. It’s either persons run with it or they will shun it and say, ‘this is madness’.”

However, Nelson said the chemicals that they used as first were not combining well and they had to change their approach.

“Enzymes work at a specific PH, so we had to consider these things. Also, we had to keep in mind that it’s a product designed to be used in sensitive areas,” he said.

“I knew the idea would work. The problem was, I didn’t know if it would work on wipes. I did it on solutions but I wasn’t sure how it would work on material,” he added.

He said there were more challenges, as the chemicals they needed for research were expensive and had to be imported.

But Crawford Williams was determined to succeed and so she paid for the materials from her own pocket.

He said although the product can be used by men, it will be marketed mainly to women. As such, the team was careful about what they used in the product.

He said customers will see a bright purple or brownish colour within seconds that will indicate that something may be wrong.

“We tested it with glucose solution and it worked out fine. Once you have glucose in any liquid, for example, urine, it will change colour rapidly. We have a 50-90 seconds change; even that we had to fine-tune to get it faster because we were at two minutes at one point,” he told the Observer.

“You can monitor your health on a daily basis…not to say once you see excess sugar in your urine you are diabetic, but if you keep seeing excess sugar in your urine, you’ll know you have a problem,” Dr Nelson said.

In the meantime, the team is building on the current momentum with plans to add another wipe to its product offering.

“Our diabetic wipe is our launch product, it is one that we had gone through all the rigours on our own. We are now also developing our urinary tract infection wipe, which is huge, as it relates to hospitals and elderly care,” Crawford Williams explained.

“Scientific research is very expensive, so we want to ensure that whoever it is that decides to come on this journey with us understands that the aim is to get this product to all the persons who are in need of it. We want to be a global brand. So we are at that point now where we are exploring. We have applied for certification, but with COVID some of them have been taking a little bit longer,” Crawford Williams said.