Xhale Innovations’ HyGreen Hand Hygiene System has been installed at the University of Illinois Medical Center (UIC) and is the nation’s fourth hand hygiene system to be installed in a medical center.
The HyGreen Hand Hygiene System has been exclusively developed to prompt healthcare workers to clean their hands before attending to a patient in an intensive care unit. After cleaning the hand, the workers keep their hands below the HyGreen hand wash sensor. The sensor in the patient room transmits a wire-free message to a badge worn by the staff. A wireless monitor, which is placed above the bed of the patient, looks for the ‘all clean’ message as the staff approaches the patient. The badge will shudder if the message is not present, thereby prompting the staff to clean hands before touching the patient. All interactions are saved in a database, enabling Infection Control through hand hygiene.
Dr. James Cook, UIC’s Chief of Infectious Diseases, and one of his colleagues Dr. Hidetaka Kitazono, started probing for an automatic method of assuring hand hygiene, which would not depend on staff situated outside the rooms of patients to trace who washed hands properly and who didn’t.
Dr. James Cook stated that they have offered the best possible care for their patients by including the innovative HyGreen Hand Hygiene System in their hospital. He added that the Hand Hygiene System effectively prevents infection and so far only few medical centers have installed it
The hand hygiene system has been installed in 22 patient rooms in UIC’s medical-surgical and neurosurgical intensive care units. Dr. Cooks added that the adherence rates of hand hygiene system vary between 30% and 70% in certain investigations, and mostly the information is not highly precise.
Hospital caregivers such as physicians, nurses, medical technicians and respiratory therapists will wear the badges. The hospital has decided to receive an arbitrary sample of hospital staff, which mostly interacts with patients, to observe their social conduct and system acceptance in order to check the rate of infection control.
Source: http://www.xhale.com