Digital hygiene solutions for hospitals

You should listen to your parents: always wash your hands. That’s especially true if you are in the healthcare sector or a patient, where poor hand hygiene can be a matter of life and death. Each year, 500,000-700,000 patients acquire a condition due to infections which they received at a hospital or a facility. Curing such diseases turns out to be more and more challenging and cost-intensive because pathogens are becoming progressively multi-resistant. Now, digitization and hygiene come together to offer entirely new opportunities for customized care and hygiene in the healthcare facilities.

Good hospital hygiene is essential to any plan for preventing MSRA, HCAIs, in hospitals. There is new study confirming that the hospital environment can become contaminated with bacteria and germs responsible for HCAIs.

Transmission of microorganisms from the environment to patients may occur indirectly through touching by hands or via direct contact with contaminated equipment. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA) and other pathogens have been recovered from a range of surfaces commonly touched, such as computer keyboards, soap dispensers, door handles, and sink taps and sites where dust can accumulate.

A current case study conducted during an outbreak of Klebsiella pneumonia in a neonatal ICU established a connection between infants developing the infection and being cared for by a nurse with active hand cultures for the epidemic strain.

However, the transmission of microorganisms from one patient to another through the hands, or from the environment, may result in adverse clinical outcomes including loss of lives and epidemics.

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Digitization and hygiene: A new approach

Controlling the spread of microorganisms and diminishing the number of healthcare-associated infections is primary concerns for any healthcare providers. Because of the invasive way of many modern medical procedures, the chance for unrelated infections to develop in hospitals and other healthcare facilities is very high. Though, the real-time tracking and hygiene index of medical equipment, staff and patients can achieve prevent the spread of infection. It can increase patient safety and receive immediate contamination alerts.

Some of the state of the art methods for maximizing hygiene:

Hand hygiene compliance monitoring

Reports that comprise missed hand hygiene opportunities as well as successful visits to hand hygiene stations.
Personal staff reminders that support real-time compliance.
Battery driven Dispenser Monitors that are easy to install.
Controls that mount to any machine, sink, canister, or pump.

Contact tracing

By recording every contact a patient has with visitors, staff, and other patients, a list of people who have been exposed to illness can rapidly be generated. It’s significant to keep track of where a patient has been, what zones of the hospital might have been contaminated, and which places the patient contact.

Medical scope management

Tracking the cleaning lifecycles, usage and storage of medical products are vital to holding the potential spread of infection.

Remote asset management

An active remote asset management system that can identify a possible disease risk and send an alert can reduce infections by eliminating sources of human error.

Environmental monitoring

Hospitals incorporate several different ecological zones that need to be managed and monitored. By monitoring environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature, centers can decrease the amount of time these microorganisms can live and, hence, reduce the possible spread of diseases or infections.

Companies delivering hygiene solutions to hospitals and healthcare facilities:

1. DebMed: The DebMed® GMS™ uses wireless communications technology incorporated into product dispensers to automatically track soap and sanitizer dispenser activations in many areas. This data is sent over the local network, with issued benchmark data to calculate hygiene compliance, and accessible to users in the form of web-based reports.

2. 3M’s: Clean-Trace HMS incorporates all the recognized benefits of using adenosine triphosphate, ATP hygiene monitoring with the additional ease of automated online trend analysis and report generation and delivery.

3. GOJO Industries: A sensor above the patient entryway tracks each passage/exits while the SMARTLINK ™ Technology in the sanitizer dispensers calculates the hand hygiene “events.” All data together is sent via the internet to the software system for monitoring.

4. TENA Identify solution combines a web-based user interface and sensor technology to help healthcare providers a patterns map, which can be highly individual, and develop personal care plans, with a customized monitoring schedule. These projects help professional healthcare workers do an even better job increasing hygiene, enhancing safety, and often lowering costs.

Future of hygiene in hospitals

We live in a period when innovation and the reevaluating of the old method of doing things are trembling up how we experience our lives. And it is trending all around us. With more access to the internet and the sinking cost of smartphones, expansion is quicker than ever. With more healthcare technologies are bolstering, HAIs, MSRAs, and other infections can effectively be monitored and controlled for hygiene and safety of Patients. Furthermore, with the usage of smart technologies, hospital and caregivers can now: