The killer? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 70% of these infections could be reduced if proper protocols for hand hygiene were followed by nurses and doctors.
Two hundred years of medical science, and people still forget to wash their hands.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are five critical moments that can dramatically improve hand hygiene:
1. Before touching a patient,
2. Before clean/aseptic procedures,
3. After body fluid exposure/risk,
4. After touching a patient, and
5. After touching patient surroundings.
The intelligentM system is basically a more sophisticated version of a reminder bracelet. It consists of a wristband that can read RFID tags on sanitation stations throughout the hospital, combined with an accelerometer that can detect the amount of time a healthcare provider spends actually using them.
“Over the last two years, we have developed a technology that allows us to alert health-care workers on the spot if they aren’t washing or sanitizing according to the CDC specifications,” said Seth Freedman, president of intelligentM.
Not only will the intelligentM wristband work in conjunction with sanitizing stations, but it can also be connected to a USB hub at the end of a shift to give administrators the ability to see how well their employees are following the WHO’s hygiene recommendations.
Mass adoption of a system like this could spell a dramatic shift in the overall containment of infections within a hospital, potentially saving thousands of lives.
Watch a Video about intelligentM:
Image Courtesy of WHO & intelligentM
Source: Technology Review