Physicians and computer scientists at The University of Iowa have collaborated on a pilot study to create a low-cost "green" wireless technology that automatically tracks the use of hand hygiene dispensers when health care workers enter and exit patient rooms.
The new method of monitoring hand hygiene compliance is essential for infection control in hospitals.
"We know that a range of pathogens are spread from health care workers to patients by direct touch and that the current rates of hand hygiene compliance are suboptimal," says the study's lead investigator Philip Polgreen, MD, MPH, assistant professor of internal medicine, infectious diseases, at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.
"Our new low-cost method of monitoring could potentially reduce costs while increasing compliance rates," says Polgreen, who also holds an appointment in epidemiology in the UI College of Public Health. Polgreen is also president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
The failure of health care workers to perform appropriate hand hygiene is one of the leading preventable causes of infections associated with health care. The new technology represents a major shift from the current method of monitoring hand hygiene compliance—direct human observation, which is both costly and labor intensive.
With human observation, Polgreen noted, there also is the potential for a so-called "Hawthorne effect," which means workers will only clean their hands when being actively observed.
The pilot study used ZigBee technology, a new generation of wireless devices that require less power. Workers wear small, pager-sized badges to monitor their use of hand hygiene dispenser stations prior to entering patient rooms.
The technology behind the study was developed in collaboration with computer scientists at the UI, led by Ted Herman, PhD, professor of computer science in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Herman's team designed badge construction and placement of small beacons inside patient rooms and other designated locations.
"A novel part of our method is how data is recorded," Herman said, "Data is recorded and processed in the badges rather than relying on a network."
The study findings suggest that there is potential for this new technology to change the behavior of health care workers and increase compliance. Polgreen pointed out that more testing in a variety of hospital settings is necessary, but that the technology may offer hospitals a cost-effective option to implementing automated monitoring of hand hygiene.
"This new technology is a novel and practical method to determine hygiene compliance that does not rely on the installation of expensive infrastructure and can be installed and removed within minutes," he said. |
