Real-time, Location-based Hand Hygiene Monitoring and Notification System

Abstract

Rising infection rates in healthcare is a global issue that causes complications for the patient, extended hospital stay, financial difficulties, and even death. One of the crucial factors that reduce those infections is better hand hygiene. Due to the lack of automated systems that can help monitoring hand hygiene compliance and reporting on collected data, some hospitals use direct observations, surveys, dispensers usage measurements and other such methods to monitor the compliance of care providers. This thesis proposes an alternative system that takes advantage of emerging off-the-shelf infrastructures in hospitals, and in particular of Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) and intelligent hand sanitizer dispensers. Our RTLS-based system improves upon the current methods by enabling interactions with care providers through notifications when they do not execute expected hand hygiene actions during care processes, even for fine-grained location situations and by introducing the concept of intelligent dispensers. RHMNS (RTLS-based Hand Hygiene Monitoring and Notification System) has two approaches (time-based and activation-based) that are sharing the same structure but they are different in their way of deciding on taken or missed hand hygiene opportunities. RHMNS also provides informative reports about hand hygiene compliance and trends.