Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 9th May 2024 Issue no. 1113
Your industry news - first
The original and best - for over 20 years!
We strongly recommend viewing Cleanzine full size in your web browser. Click our masthead above to visit our website version.
Vitalacy adds SmartBadge to hand hygiene monitoring portfolio
Designed to fit behind a healthcare provider's ID badge, Vitalacy's new SmartBadge captures and delivers individual-, unit- and facility-level hand hygiene performance data to hospital leaders responsible for quality, safety, and infection control and prevention.
The latest addition to the Vitalacy Patient Safety Platform, this entry-level device enables healthcare systems to meet the Leapfrog Group's hand hygiene standards at a competitive price point. The SmartBadge provides a cost-efficient, yet accurate and effective way of improving hand hygiene compliance, which research studies have linked to lower healthcare-acquired infections.
"The SmartBadge enables healthcare systems to meet the Leapfrog Group's hand hygiene practice standards at a competitive price point," explains Vitalacy CEO and cofounder Janel Nour-Omid. "With our SmartBadge, organisations can begin monitoring and measuring compliance the right way, giving them a benchmark upon which to improve.
"They can choose to upgrade to our SmartClip or SmartBand to further spur hand hygiene improvement with real-time reminders at the point of care."
To meet the Leapfrog standards, healthcare organisations must complete 200 observations of hand hygiene opportunities per month per unit, with the observations occurring across all days of the week and all shifts. Because of the difficulty and the inherent bias of doing these observations through direct human monitoring, organisations are increasingly turning to electronic hand hygiene monitoring solutions to meet Leapfrog's criteria.
With healthcare organisations still recovering financially from Covid-19, the Vitalacy team finds them looking for a cost-efficient, yet accurate and effective way of improving hand hygiene compliance, which research studies have linked to lower healthcare-acquired infection rates.
Vitalacy's additional hand hygiene monitoring devices, SmartClip and SmartBand, provide real-time hand wash reminders at the point of care. The SmartBand has the additional feature of monitoring wash duration and coaching care providers to extend the time they wash their hands.
Vitalacy's experience with St. Mary's Healthcare System for Children in Queens, New York, showed a correlation between longer hand wash duration and reduced healthcare-acquired infections.
13th January 2022