Research Project
9467399
Project Summary This Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 project aims to develop and characterize a sensor-based platform to track and analyze healthcare providers? hand hygiene quality and compliance automatically and continuously. Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) are the most common type of complication for patients who are hospitalized. In the United States, 1 out of every 20 hospitalized patients is affected by healthcare-associated infections. A good hand hygiene practice is one of the most effective measures to reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients. However, recent data shows that on average U.S. healthcare providers clean their hands less than half of the times they should. Today most hospitals still rely on direct observation to monitor healthcare providers? hand hygiene compliance, which is very ineffective, expensive, time consuming and often results in biased data. Therefore, the development of a fully automated and easy-to-use platform to continuously monitor the healthcare providers? hand hygiene compliance can have significant impact on clinical management. In this research proposal, we will develop, prototype and test a low-power hand hygiene sensor and develop the analytics software for hand hygiene compliance monitoring. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a sensor-based platform to help healthcare providers improve their hand hygiene practices and reduce healthcare associated infections.
