Group monitoring technology helps reduce HAIs
Will ensure compliance rates based on WHO’s Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, says Deb Group
Skincare company Deb Group’s DebMedGMS (Group Monitoring System) reports hand hygiene compliance rates in real-time, which according to the UK-headquartered firm will enable hospitals to monitor whether they are meeting compliance rates based on the World Health Organisation's (WHO) ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’.
A stand-alone system, DebMedGMS can be installed in any hospital without requiring pre-existing real-time locating systems (RTLS) or radio-frequency identification (RFID).
The system was first shown in July 2010 in New Orleans, US at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) Conference, after more than two years of development in collaboration with Greenville Hospital System (GHS) in Greenville, SC.
“Before the DebMedGMS, we relied on hospital staff observing and reporting on compliance rates,” said Tom Diller, vice president of Quality and Patient Safety at GHS. “Now that we have 24/7 access to reliable data based on the WHO ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’, our unit managers can share the data openly and frankly with staff on the unit and take immediate action to improve performance.”
With the DebMedGMS, hospitals are now able to identify the actual number of times staff wash their hands in each area of the hospital in real-time.
Using data from the report, Hospital Hand Hygiene Opportunities: Where and When? (HOW2), the system uses the expected number of handwashing opportunities to determine the compliance rates of each unit and those of the hospital as a whole.
The HOW2 study, which received major funding from the Deb Group, was published in last month’s American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC).
“The aim of our study was to create, for the first time, a set of statistically significant benchmarks for various unit types in different hospital settings based on the WHO's ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’, not just before and after patient contact,” said Elaine Larson, associate dean for research and professor of pharmaceutical and therapeutic research at Columbia University School of Nursing and one of the investigators of the study.
The DebMedGMS provides hospitals with real-time access to compliance reports using a combination of wireless technology built into its soap and sanitiser dispensers and proprietary software.
“We believe that real and sustainable improvement comes from within, which is why we based our system on group monitoring as opposed to individual tagging and tracking,” said Paul Alper, vice president, Strategy and Business Development, Deb Worldwide Healthcare.
“With the DebMed programme, we enable healthcare workers to have meaningful dialogue that drives individual accountability and responsibility for compliance.”
Each year in the US, 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are responsible for 99,000 fatalities, making it one of the leading causes of death behind cardiovascular disease and cancer.
