RFID-based Hand-Hygiene System Prevents Health-care Acquired Infections

Proventix installed an RFID-enabled hand-washing station in each room on the hospital's post-operative surgical floor, where there are 42 patient beds, as well as stations throughout the floor's hallways, for a total of about 80 stations. Each staff member wears a 3.5-inch-long plastic badge containing an active RFID tag encoded with a unique ID number linked to that individual's name, position and other details in the Proventix standalone software system. The readers create a mesh network allowing the RFID tag to be read and located throughout the floor in which the system is installed. When a tag transmits a signal encoded with its ID number, Nix explains, a reader receives that signal and forwards the tag's ID number, along with its own ID, to a bridge connected to the back-end system via an Ethernet cable to a PC. There are currently three bridges installed on the floor, he says.

The nGage system uses RFID to record when a health-care provider uses a hand sanitizer, and to display customizable messages.

When a physician enters a particular patient's room, the system determines that the doctor has entered that specific room, based on the dispenser's reader ID number. Upon approaching the hand-washing station, he or she must press the dispenser lever to use the sanitizer or soap and water. At the same time, the software links the ID number of the individual standing in front of the station with the dispenser's activation. The software then displays messages specific to that user (currently, all Princeton Baptist employees receive the same message, describing the importance of hand washing on reducing infections, and providing statistics to reinforce that message), and also stores a record of the event, indicating when and where the employee has washed his or her hands.

When the staff member leaves the patient's room, the system expects another hand-washing event from that dispenser to occur. If the doctor does, in fact, use the dispenser a second time, that event is recorded. If not, however, the system creates a record noting that, though that information is not used to penalize the employee, Davenport notes. "We wanted to focus on incentives," she says, and in this case, the incentive for health-care workers is to develop a track record showing they washed their hands regularly. Data can also be displayed on the screen indicating the number of times that individual has washed his or her hands, as well as how he or she compares with other workers. ("Remember your hand-hygiene compliance goal. Today, you are 85% compliant.") "By nature, people in the medical profession are very competitive," Davenport states. To date, she says, she has found that the staff use the stations to try to build a high record of hand washing.

Hundreds of employees are wearing the badges, Davenport reports, in addition to their existing ID badges, which do not contain RFID tags and are merely printed with the staff member's name. In the future, she says she hopes that each worker will have an ID badge that incorporates the Proventix RFID tag. During the next six weeks, the hospital intends to install the system in its intensive care unit, and after six months, it will consider expanding the deployment throughout its entire facility.

With the RFID infrastructure in place, Davenport says she hopes to eventually utilize the system to also track the location of assets, by attaching similar RFID tags to equipment. Proventix does not offer a specific application for tracking assets in the health-care environment, Nix notes—but for Princeton Baptist, he says, the company can build asset tracking onto the existing system. "We can expand to a more robust RFID solution in the future," he states.