It’s that time of year, again. With the cold and flu season well under way the conditions are optimal for the spread of germs and virus.

Overall, about 80% of infectious diseases, like the flu, are transmitted by touch or through droplets made when people with flu cough, sneeze, or talk and can unfortunately also happen right in the hospital. 

GE Healthcare’s AgileTrac Hand Hygiene technology enables hospitals to accurately record, measure, and report hand washing data throughout their facility, all with little or no changes to workflow. Individual staff interactions with a soap or hand-sanitiser dispenser are automatically captured and recorded using Real Time Location System (RTLS) technology.

The CDC says that hand washing is the single most important means of preventing potentially fatal infections from spreading from patient to patient to healthcare worker and vice versa. However, a World Health Organization report says that the average hand hygiene compliance rate of healthcare workers is only 38.7%. The majority of hospitals are using direct observation to track hand washing even though they are not satisfied with the reliability of the data. 
Healthcare workers are unaware that the use of data and technology can help their facility reduce infection as well as improve patient safety and workflow.

AgileTrac’s use of data + analytics captures hand washing opportunities across the hospital and records behaviors, avoiding observer bias. So while AgileTrac is recording data, it also measures hand hygiene compliance among nurses, physicians, and other hospital staff. The detailed data can identify potentially missed opportunities for hand washing, thereby encouraging clinicians to modify their behavior when dealing with patients. This can help prevent flu viruses or other infectious diseases from spreading across the patient floor, waiting room, or cafeteria of the hospital. Such a small change in behavior can mean that one less patient receives a hospital acquired infection or experiences flu-like symptoms.

The AgileTrac technology accumulates data and analysis to improve patient safety and compliance procedures. The use of data taps into GE Healthcare’s exploration into the possibilities of the Industrial Internet—an open global network that connects machines, people and data to remove $150B in waste from major industries like Healthcare.

Source: GE Healthcare www.gehealthcare.com/

12 December 2013

«« First US Contracts for Agfa Healthcare’s IMPAX Agility PACS Platform


Datix Patient Safety Software Selected for King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre »»


Latest Articles

It’s that time of year, again. With the cold and flu season well under way the conditions are optimal for the spread of germs and virus. Overall, abou...