Medline and Intelligent Observation (IO) announced an exclusive collaboration in which Medline will sell the company’s IntelObserve electronic hand hygiene monitoring system, the only e-monitoring solutions that uses near-field magnetic induction (NFMI), plus a proprietary form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to capture hand hygiene opportunities and compliance events, and push data to leaders and real-time alerts to front-line workers.
Monitoring efforts are usually recorded through visual observation of behavior with a clipboard or tablet, but studies have shown that this method can overstate compliance by up to 300 percent.
NFMI is the same technology used in automobile key fobs to determine proximity to the car and enables remote unlocking of doors and keyless ignition systems. Using NFMI’s centimeter-level proximity detection capability, IntelObserve captures compliance data and pushes it to the cloud through sensors placed near doors, beds and hand hygiene dispensers of patient rooms. It is also the only system that monitors either standard for hand hygiene, including “In and Out” or bed proximity detection, which is an accurate proxy for the World Health Organization’s 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene. If a healthcare worker does not use alcohol-based hand sanitizer or wash their hands with soap and water when an opportunity is detected, a smart badge holder on the healthcare worker can send them an alert, reminding them to perform hand hygiene. The solution’s dashboards are accessed via the web and can also provide data on hand hygiene at the individual worker, room, unit/ward or facility-wide level.
“Access to accurate, reliable data enables timely feedback to staff, which is essential to drive higher compliance and help reduce the risk of infections, especially with new evolving pathogens,” said Paul Alper, Medline vice president of patient safety innovation and inventor of earlier generation monitoring systems.
