Hand hygiene and skin care solutions specialist, DebMed, has partnered with RFiD Discovery to combine technologies, in a bid to accurately record real-time hand hygiene moments across hospital wards.
In the UK today, approximately 300,000 patients contract an illness whilst being treated in Healthcare premises, costing the NHS £1 billion a year. The frequency of moving patients across wards remains a common activity within a hospital, resulting in the risk of infections spreading further.
In light of this, DebMed has teamed up with RFiD Discovery to launch an RFID asset tracking system that uniquely links with point of care dispensers. It incorporates a tag into the bracket that sits at the end of the bed, which is vital for performing point of care hand hygiene.
The technology is part of the DebMed Hand Hygiene Compliance System and is designed to allow Trusts to accurately report hand hygiene data, by recording the exact location of each event, even if a bed is moved to another part of the hospital.
The system is said to ensure that hospitals can capture and monitor hand hygiene compliance following the WHO 5-Moments, which recommends when exactly healthcare workers clean their hands. The 5-Moments include; cleaning before touching a patient, before cleaning or aseptic procedures, after body fluid exposure or risk, after touching a patient and after touching patient surroundings.
Paul Jakeway, marketing director at Deb, said: “It’s important that hospitals track hand hygiene compliance rates across each ward, not just the hospital at top-level. This will ensure that accurate results of hand hygiene moments are captured.
“We’re looking forward to working with RFiD Discovery to roll this system out across hospitals, which we believe will ensure a higher standard of hand hygiene behaviour and allow us to improve standards on a ward by ward basis.”
Andrew James, director of commercial operations at RFiD Discovery, added: “We’re delighted to be working with Deb and providing an innovative solution, which we believe will take hand hygiene compliance to a whole new level and truly make a difference to the healthcare sector. Not only will it create a safer working environment for staff but it will protect patients to the highest standards too.”
