After a trial period, Columbus-based OhioHealth and IBM have announced a first-of-its-kind infection control partnership to improve hand hygiene compliance through wireless sensors and big data.
The two organizations have been working on a pilot project using the wireless sensors installed at handwashing stations and real-time analytics to improve hand hygiene compliance, which has exceeded 90 percent at the pilot hospital, according to a news release. The pilot has been ongoing since last year.
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According to IBM, the data collected in real time is sent to hospital administrators, who can sort the data according to many factors including wards, shifts and jobs, because of individual RFID identification tags assigned to each employee. Administrators can also alert noncompliant staff to their behavior in real time.
This real-time component may be key to boosting compliance to almost twice the national average; the system is nearly 100 times faster than OhioHealth's previous handwashing compliance system, and compliance jumped nearly 20 percent after OhioHealth implemented the IBM system.
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