Handwash Monitoring Bracelet to facilitate the healthcare organizations for monitoring of correct handwash protocols with compliance while saving time and money.

 

Problem:

Hand washing for hospital staff is extremely important as it ensures safe and healthy environments for patients, and greatly reduces hospital acquired infection (HAI). In many jurisdictions 100% hand washing compliance standards have been adopted. To ensure adherence to these policies, hand washing auditors are often hired to manually audit each hospital staff member and confirm if they are washing their hands at the proper times. This can range from tens to hundreds of highly trained practitioners and millions of dollars in costs, not to mention the opportunity cost of the care that the hand washing auditors could be delivering. Other technology solutions that have attempted to address this problem lack key features necessary to increase effectiveness and deliver at a price that is feasible for most health authorities.

Solution:

A simple, cost-effective technology that tracks when a user's hands are being washed by collecting location information when they enter a room, when their hands are in the sink, how long their hands are in the sink, and if the water is running. The solution would also proactively alert the user if handwashing as per health guidelines are not followed to build habit and reduce the risk of infection. This would reduce the need for in-person verification and cost while preserving a high degree of safety.

Product:

Handwash Monitoring Bracelet to facilitate the healthcare organizations for monitoring of correct handwash protocols with compliance while saving time and money.
A software and sensor solution that uses off-the-shelf RFID technology within user bracelets as well as sensors within each hospital/facility sink to track and verify that when a staff member enters a new room, they wash their hands in the sink for a sufficient amount of time. The technology would have an administrative back end that would log this data in real-time and connect to existing hospital/clinic analytics systems or governmental analytics systems to provide data where users are already looking. Safe Healthcare bracelet will allow hospitals and other critical care facilities to track, verify, and proactively encourage hand-washing requirements without the need for extremely expensive and unnecessary in person auditors. Safe Healthcare bracelet will also integrate with existing electronic patient record (EPR), primary patient care, and employee performance software to connect hand washing compliance data with patient data and staff data to form actionable analytics and reduce the potential for hospital-acquired infection, one of the key metrics prioritized by health authorities and governments.

From a user perspective, Safe Healthcare anticipates developing the following key elements in the prototype version of the technology:

● Home screen/dashboard - in this view admin users will visualize key performance metrics such as number of reminders triggered, per employee hand washing times/amount, etc.

● Assets page - in this view admin users would be able to see a map with the locations of all censors/assets installed as well as basic information about each asset. Depending on the technology selected for the wearable bracelet, it may be possible to see the real time location or last captured location of each bracelet asset.

● Policies page - in this view admin users could define the hand washing policies relevant to their healthcare facility. This may include how long after entering a room before the user receives a prompt to wash their hands, how long hands need to be washed for, etc.

● Integrations page - In this view admin users can find api integration data to connect Safe Healthcare with other systems in use by healthcare organizations. As the technology advances, this page may feature direct, one-click integration with the most commonly used platforms.

● Settings page - in this view users will be able to edit/update standard profile settings such as contact information, contact preferences etc.

● Our company is flexible to add or edit modules as per the requirements of the customer

Features:

● Ability for users to receive mobile/text reminders or haptic reminders after they have entered a new room and if they have not washed their hands within a predetermined amount of time.

● Ability for administrators to set rules for hand-washing within the system.

● Ability for administrators to analyze and display data in a variety formats, including spotting policy violations and % adherence to the requirements.

● Ability to integrate Safe Healthcare data into existing information systems such as employee performance, ERP, etc to great value within existing systems and processes. In addition, any special requirements by the customer, if mutually agreed, can be added

Background Research:

This idea has been adopted after market research which established the requirement of such a monitoring device that would help healthcare providers to follow the timely and essential steps of handwashing to keep up with safety compliance for infection control.

Advantages of the product:

Hand washing compliance standards have been implemented in many hospital jurisdictions to ensure health and safety for patients. But ensuring compliance with policies is inefficient and expensive. Hand washing auditors are often hired to manually audit individual hospital staff member and confirm if they are washing their hands at the proper times. The amount of time and money this problem causes is massive.

Our product will address this issue with a simple, cost-effective, and innovative technology that tracks hand washing duration and frequency, as well as prompts users if they forget, by collecting location and activity information through existing RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. The data collected will be logged, tracked, and integrated with existing hospital health and performance management software.

This bracelet is a simple, cost effective and innovative solution that would track handwashing duration and frequency, as well as prompts users if they forget.

Technology:

It is is a software and sensor solution that uses RFID technology within user bracelets as well as sensors within each hospital/facility sink to track and verify when a staff member enters a new room, they wash their hands in the sink for a sufficient amount of time. An administrative back-end would log and compile this data in real-time.

Data record:

 The data collected will be logged, tracked and integrated with existing hospital health and performance management software. It can be used by hospital administrators and healthcare staff.

Users:

Hospital Administrators:
These are the primary users and economic buyers of the solution. Safe Healthcare will function as a much more cost-effective solution to 1:1 compliance auditors and will provide immediate, actionable data to hospital administrators about the level of compliance and score of the hospital's hand washing program. These users will primarily interact with the administrative dashboard and back-end system settings.
Hospital/healthcare staff:
These are one of the key users of the solution and will interact with the wearable product on a day-to-day basis, but will have very little interaction with the software or installed sensors. This group will benefit from Safe Healthcare because they will not need to be followed by a compliance auditor and they will receive notifications in real-time if they forget to wash their hands within a set time limit when entering a new room.

Competitive Advantage:
The competitive advantage for Safe Healthcare will come from the innovative use of existing and inexpensive hardware technologies, as well as a powerful data-driven back-end created specifically to solve this substantial issue within the healthcare industry. The ability to provide reliable and audible handwashing verification, and real-time prompting without the need for expensive resources to manually complete this task will be a huge asset for healthcare organizations and a distinct competitive advantage for Safe Healthcare. Health care systems have often invested heavily in legacy technology systems and the chance of adoption of an entirely new system is small. Safe Healthcare will build competitive advantage by connecting data from and to existing systems and empower the tools already being used by the industry.

 

Background Market Research: (Click To Download PDF)