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Gary S. Marshall, MD; Shanna M. Barton, MD; Theresa M. Fiorito, MD

Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Connection™: Prevention and Control of Meningococcal Disease — Individualizing Vaccine Recommendations in Adolescent Populations

 advanced technology page allows readers to stay up-to-date on new technologies aimed at preventing infection, such as ultraviolet disinfection, real-time locating systems, foggers, sterilization robots, automation, virtual reality technology during hospital design, and more. Articles and videos focus on explaining the role of these various technologies within the health care system and how infection prevention professionals can integrate them into everyday use.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 6, 2024.

Weekly Rounds: UV-C Disinfecting Ultrasound Probes, Reducing C difficile Testing, and More

Chronos, a chemical-free UV-C disinfection device for ultrasound probes, received FDA clearance. It offers health care professionals a fast, automated solution to reduce cross-contamination and improve infection prevention.

New UV-C Disinfection Technology for Ultrasound Probes Earns FDA Clearance

Effective implementation of UV-C disinfection is crucial to reducing HAIs. The Providence Holy Cross Medical Center achieved a 19% reduction in multidrug-resistant HAIs and saved $1.2 million through strategic deployment, highlighting the importance of collaboration and innovative management.

Closing the Gap: Maximizing the Potential of UV-C Technology to Reduce Health Care-Associated Infections

Infection Control Today's Product Locator is a monthly column highlighting some of the latest advanced technology in infection prevention. 


ICT's Product Locator: July/August 2024

Jackie Otero, senior territory sales representative at Abatement Technologies, discusses the SHIELD WALL modular containment system by Abatement Technologies, highlighting its quick assembly, durability, noise reduction, and benefits in maintaining indoor air quality in health care settings.


Infection Intel: Augmenting SHIELD WALL Modular Containment Systems by Abatement Technologies

Eco-friendly cleaners 

In the pursuit of sustainable living, consumers increasingly seek eco-friendly cleaning products. In a conversation with a cleaning industry expert, 

) seeks answers about key features and certifications to ensure alignment with sustainability goals.

 speaks with Kirsten Hochberg, PhD, senior clinical and scientific affairs specialist for CloroxPro. Kirsten hosted 

 at the ISSA North America 2023 Show held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from November 13 to 16, 2023, and presented on the efficacy of eco-conscious cleaners and disinfectants.

 asked, “When consumers are looking to purchase eco-friendly cleaning products, which I know that you know so much about, what are the features or certifications that they should consider to ensure that the products align with their sustainability goals?”

“One of the best things to look for and one of the easiest to identify is the EPA Safer Choice certification for cleaning products and the EPA Designed for the Environment certification for disinfectants,” Hochberg told 

. “The requirements for both of [these certifications] are almost entirely overlapping; you have to show parity performance to traditional products, which is the big thing that most cleaners are looking for, is that their eco-friendly product will work just as well as their traditional one. And that's built into the certification." 

Hochberg continues, "In addition to that, there are only certain ingredients that are approved by the Safer Choice standard. And they've been, you know, extensively researched for qualification. And you have to also show sustainability benefits to your product. So, you have to have at least 25% post-consumer recycled plastic and the packaging. And to keep your certification, you have to show improvement in that metric over time. So just by finding the certification, which you can have on the product label, so it's easy to see it's right on the bottle, you know you're getting all those features. There are 7 active ingredients that are approved, including lactic acid, which is the basis for [Clorox's] Eco-clean disinfecting cleaner, which is a disinfectant that disinfects in two minutes or less and kills viruses in 30 seconds.”

Hochberg also provides a glimpse into an upcoming thought leader session at ISSA. Beyond the efficacy of eco-friendly products, the session delved into the intersection of sustainability and the cleaning industry. Topics included the impact of eco-conscious choices on LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for buildings, a deeper understanding of how disinfectants work, and an exploration of the science behind green alternatives.

Explore eco-friendly cleaning with a focus on EPA certifications and eco-friendly cleaners' efficacy. Uncover real-world research insights and a review of an ISSA thought leader session.

Do Eco-Conscious Cleaning Products Clean as Well as Their Traditional Counterparts?

Reaching for zero infections in orthopedic operating rooms led one facility to find a visible-light continuous environmental disinfection system. Recently, to find out how the system works and the results of the study that examined the system, 

 spoke with Cliff Yahnke, PhD, chief scientist and head of clinical affairs for Indigo-Clean and Kenall Manufacturing; and Lynnelle Murrell, RN, BSN, CIC, director, infection prevention and control, Maury Regional Medical Center.

“Indigo-Clean, a continuous environmental disinfection technology, uses visible light to safely and continuously kill harmful viruses and bacteria within the environment while also providing ambient illumination within the space,” states the 

. “Indigo-Clean is a technology integrated into light fixtures, which install easily into the ceiling of any hospital room, classroom, or office space to bolster your current cleaning protocols.”

Murrell explained, “With our patient population and orthopedic surgeries, we have found that you] have to keep doing the [infection prevention] bundle; you can't just let one part of what prevents infection. While the lights are there, they're constant. And I'll go on a little rabbit trail to say we've even checked in their efficacy a couple of times, to make sure that they are still those in the room as they should….But you have to keep going back as far as the human element and mak[e] sure that we are doing all the basic things [like] we are wearing our surgical attire.”

Yahnke added, “Where Lynette and I ended up [in] the first phase of our research, we've started to look at other questions that we can answer in the operating room, specifically how, or what the benefit of the lights might be a real-time intraoperatively while the patient is on the table. And so we've done a pilot study looking at, essentially, the transmission of organisms within the room, from when the room is prepped to when the patient is brought in and prepared for anesthesia. And we specifically use a technique called wholesale genomic analysis to fingerprint various strains of organisms. And this was a pilot study that was done at the University of Iowa; it was published by AORN [Association of periOperative Registered Nurses Conference] in 2020. We have a full-blown randomized study going on at a major school right now; hopefully, that'll be ready to publish here in the very near future. But the idea is that it highlights the benefits of this unique technology, which is that it can be used while people are in the room. And you know, that also highlights one of the common misconceptions of the technology is that people apply standard metrics that they use for ultraviolet light, for example, which is, you know, kind of log kill or the amount of kill in a very short period of time. Whereas we asked the more medically relevant questions, such as reduction of post-operative infection and intraoperative transmission. And we find that those questions resonate with medical professionals because that's how they view things. People realize there are organisms contaminated throughout the hospital. And that, of course, reducing organisms is a good thing. But it doesn't necessarily answer the medical question: does this benefit the patient in any way? And that's what we're trying to focus on with our research.” 

Yahnke and Murrell also discussed the system’s effect against SARS-CoV-2. “The other piece of research, which is incredibly relevant to our time here, is effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses, and historically visible light was just considered effective against viruses,” Yahnke said. “But we answered that question in a way that no one had before. It's ineffective against non-enveloped viruses, such as norovirus. Still, it turns out that enveloped viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A, have this fatty lipid layer surrounding the inner contents of the virus. And that fatty lipid layer has the hydrocarbons required to absorb the visible light to create the oxidative reaction, which then can disassociate the organism. I traveled in the middle of this entire pandemic in the fall of 2020, to Mount Sinai in New York, where we did this research with Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, PhD, [Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Director of the 

Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute

 of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York] who is world-renowned in this subject. And the results were revolutionary for our field. It was published in 

. It gives you some indication as to the importance and significance of the results. And again, it shows the fact that this visible light, even in very low dose situations, can be very effective against these types of viruses.”

Visible-light continuous environmental disinfection system reduces microbial contamination and surgical site infections, as noted in an AJIC study. Experts explain the study and the technology.


Visible-Light Continuous Environmental Disinfection System Reduces Pathogens

Sequence-based diagnostics was developed in the 1970s, and since then has been used to in the medical field to diagnose cancers and other diseases. However, until recently, it hadn’t been used for infectious diseases. 

 is changing that status quo. It is an early-stage company developing a new category of diagnostics for infectious disease to identify pathogens and antibiotic susceptibility profile using whole genome sequencing and machine learning in hours instead of the usual days.

Jong Lee, chief executive officer, Day Zero Diagnostics, spoke to 

) about the company’s goals for assisting the general health care space, and their special announcement at the 

 in Washington, DC, on October 19-23, 2022.

The company announced at ID Week Conference that they received awards from CARB-X totaling over $16 million this year.

Lee said, “Sequencing-based diagnostics have been something that people have talked about for decade, and sequencing-based diagnostics have become clinically useful in some categories, like oncology or prenatal testing, but they have not made a dent in infectious diseases. Sequencing is used for research purposes or to do research projects. But it's not actually integrated into clinical decision-making when you're talking about care of patients.”

Sequencing-based diagnostics is even more critical to use to fight against infectious disease, especially since antimicrobial resistance expands. “The other takeaway is about things like outbreak detection and infection control. If you walk around IDWeek [conference], you see a lot of presentations about that. Almost every single presentation that's now being given has sequencing as the core method by which people make that determination. In fact, if you're not using sequencing, what's clear from the presentations being given here is that you're not state of the art anymore.”

Lee then discussed what is limiting his company thus far.“But most practitioners think of sequencing again just as a research tool, something that academic researchers are doing and presenting their work in a place like IDWeek, they don't realize that it's available today as a commercial service. And that's where [Day Zero Diagnostics] do a lot of our efforts around diagnostic development. Earlier this year, we'd launched a commercial service that's available to any hospital, where within 2 days, we provide sequencing-based determinations of commonality, so that hospitals can make a really informed decision when they're trying to implement, expensive protocols, expensive ways to deal with an outbreak.”

 asked Lee what he hoped the attendees took away from his presentation, he said, “One message to take away both from us and our announcements [of additional funding from CARB-X] and some of the presentations that we've been involved in, but others as well, is that we're in a zone where in the next 3 to 5 years, sequencing-based diagnostics are going to become reality for clinical microbiology and infectious diseases. That's something that people have talked about already for a decade, but it's getting to the point where the technology is maturing, and costs are getting to the point where I think sequencing is going to be the future of the way infectious disease diagnostics are done going forward.”

While sequencing-based diagnostics have been used since the 1970s, only recently has the technology been used for infectious diseases.

Sequencing-Based Diagnostics Critical to Fighting Against Infectious Disease

Workplace violence in hospitals and other health care facilities is increasingly on the rise, and the safety of staff and patients is paramount. In 2020, 

 was done that reported that 61.9% of 331,544 staff members in the 253 studies examined had reported exposure to any form of workplace violence. One thing that hospitals can do is to prevent known threats from entering the facility before they can enter, and at the same time, only allow authorized personnel in secured areas of the hospital.

To find out more about this technology, recently, 

) spoke with Dean Nicolls, chief marketing officer for 

, a technology company, Tel Aviv, Israel about their facial recognition technology. He discusses why facial recognition is needed in a hospital, the features that makes the technology unique and the company's future plans. He also explains how this product helps infection preventionists specifically beyond safety and into infection control and prevention.

: Why is facial recognition needed in a hospital?

Dean Nicolls, chief marketing officer for Oosto

: There are a few very important use cases. One use case is more hospitals are going touchless, and they're trying to avoid the spread of germs. For example, what I'm talking specifically about is access control. When I'm speaking about access control, that means who's allowed into different parts of the hospital. For example, in the operating room, you only want to have doctors and the patient. What facial recognition can do is ensure that the only people who get access to those very sensitive areas are the people who are given privilege to do that. It can also mean, even in other parts of the hospital, like the server room, you might only want specific IT (information technology) people in that server room to have access to that [because] there is a lot of sensitive information there.

That's one very important use case the hospitals are using facial recognition for, but there's a second emerging use case. That is to protect the staff, the nurses, the doctors, from any known threats. We're hearing increasingly in the news about hospital staff who are being attacked, in the hospital. These are people who have either an axe to grind because of maybe their attitudes about COVID-19. Or [they] could be a violent a spouse of a doctor or nurse. And the same technology that you use for facial access control, can be used to identify those known bad actors before they even set foot in the hospital, and make sure that security is alerted when they do set foot. And that's kind of an emerging use case to protect the hospital staff.

 about Oosto's facial recognition technology.

 It's important for your readership to understand facial recognition because it means a lot of different things to different people. The way that our facial recognition technology works with the existing camera system inside the hospital. The cameras are streaming from their CCTV cameras—and they have cameras spread throughout the hospital and sometimes in the garage and the front entrances…operating rooms and other sensitive areas. We're essentially analyzing the camera stream in real time. We're looking for is a face in the frame of the video. And again, think about how fast this is happening. This is all done via artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks. Once we identify that yes, there's a face, we then look for the distinguishing characteristics of the face. Then we're comparing that, essentially creating almost a facial map of that person's face in real time, and then comparing that to a known list of people who are on a watch list, or could be a list of authorized employees if people who are on that. For example, in the example I gave of a dangerous person, as people are walking through the front entrance, even if they're in a crowd, or they're in a group, we're analyzing each of the people in that group, say is any of these people on the watch list? And if they are, we're then notifying security automatically for them. So, [security] can then take appropriate action.

The way it works with access control, [is] just the reverse. You might have a list of 1000 employees who are meant to be in the hospital. And then in many of the entrances to the hospital that are for employees only, you might have the employee look at a little reader. looking at a camera. And just by looking at the camera, we know this is an authorized employee. They're on the good list, and then the doors will open. And again, they can do that without having to touch any surfaces or any keypads. So that's part of the touchless story. 

And if you think about doctors who have just scrubbed and they go into the operating room, they can enter an operating room by just looking at a sensor and say, “Oh, this is the doctor,” even if he has a mask on. Then because we can recognize that person as being on the authorized list, the doors open, and then the doctor can enter. And anyone who’s not authorized and nonemployees, we don't recognize this given employee, so the doors don't open. So that's the way of keeping kind of the riffraff out. It's also a sense of ensuring that only the right people are where they ought to be.

: What is the failure rate for this technology

 It is surprisingly low. It is less than a percent.

: What are the specific features that makes this technology so unique?

If you think about access control, historically, the way the hospital would deal with access control is they would use probably one of three methods who use like a car key or a fob. You have to carry this car key with you. And you swipe it against a panel on a wall, and that gives you access, or you touch a keypad and you put in a code. For the last two decades, most hospitals use some kind of system like that. Or if they had a biometric system, they might use a thumbprint or something like that. But as we've gotten touchless right, there's been a need to move away from those technologies. The other problems with some of those technologies like the card keys and the fobs is that they can be lost, stolen, or shared. I could share my card with you and you might be a bad actor. You now have access to the hospital. You can access any part of the hospital and most hospitals are concerned about it. They only want the right people access in a hospital. They're trying to close those security loopholes. Using biometrics like the face is an emerging way that a lot of modern hospitals are now evaluating, not only because you can close those security loopholes, but because you can also allow your hospital to go touchless.

: How does this product helped infection preventionist specifically?

I think the primary reason is the touchless area. The notion that you can go from room to room within a hospital and specifically going where you get scrubbed and clean into the operating room. And to use this technology without having to touch anything. Because you've just been scrubbed. Some of the examples we saw on that footage in thehospitals [on the Oosto website], or doctors holding their hands like this [hands up after preparing for surgery], as they go through the door, and doors are automatically opening; they don't need to touch the doors? The ability to even recognize that in certain areas, you might need all personnel to be wearing a mask. We can use this technology to alert people. If someone enters an area that's supposed to have everyone have a mask, and they don't have a mask, we can alert [the proper] people that the person isn't wearing a mask. These are the areas a lot of it in your specific area that we're referring to the access control going touchless is the primary benefit of this technology.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the video for the entire interview for additional information.

From safety to infection control, facial recognition in health care facilities is a new tool to keep both patients and staff safe from workplace violence. 


Facial Recognition Revolutionizes Health Care Facility Safety and Infection Control

Coatings of antimicrobial products on high touch surfaces do not last long in real life situations, but with multiresistant pathogens on the rise, something must be done. In Switzerland, a study was conducted on devices with the antimicrobial product built in.

)spoke to Andreas Widmer, MD, MS, president of the National Center for Infection Control, University of Basel in Basel, Switzerland, lead author of the study; and Frédéric Loyrion, sales manager at Sanitized, also in Switzerland, about the study that Widmer and his team conducted using a Sanitized product to combat multiresistant pathogens on high contact surfaces. The study was presented at the 

 held on October 20, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland.

: Dr. Widmer, would tell us the key points of the study?

 Yeah, I think we all know that the environmental contamination of multiresistant pathogens is a major issue. It has been part of the COVID-19 pandemic where contact also is an issue. And after SARS 1, my colleague [W. H.] Seto from Hong Kong initialized that all elevators public elevators have to be cleaned every hour, 24/7. In our area, we couldn't afford the human resources to clean it repetitively. Knowing that recontamination occurs even in the hospital within 4 to 6 hours after disinfecting the room. One of the [answers] would be self-disinfecting areas and devices, which we already know from intravascular catheter wherever used very successfully and other medical devices. But in the environment, it was more difficult because you have a coating which has been used, then with the physical aberration and say, more or less abuse of the hospital staff with carts and devices, this coating falls apart, and the effect of self-disinfection is gone.

We already did some tests, and it didn't work more than 2 to 4 weeks. And then this coating was not effective anymore. There was a need for [a] new device or new technology, and then we came up to Sanitized, which produces a product that's in the device. It's not a coating; it's in the device. Even if you have kind of physical attacks by our health care workers, the injured part is still effective. And that's the reason why our federal [Swiss] government subsidized the study, to make sure that this product is not only working in the laboratory, but also in a daily practice in a university hospital setting.

 The goal of the research was to identify, in particular, multiresistant pathogens. In the past, a lot of studies were done with just bacterial load. And we have good bacteria and bad bacteria. That brought us that we don't want to eliminate all bacteria in the hospital. You don’t want to get rid of all of those bad bacteria. In the past, it was very difficult because if you have just a swab from the surface, any swabs would cost you about $400-500 to identify all pathogens. Now we have a new technology available [within the last] couple years that allows you to do it at a much lower cost. And that's the reason why we were able to identify all bacteria and separate good bacteria [from] the bad bacteria, and the basic study results that we could [get] with this product, you have a significant difference between non-Sanitized surfaces versus Sanitized surfaces, and, in particular, a significant reduction of the multiresistant pathogens.

: What are the specific takeaways for infection preventionists and environmental service professionals?

 We, at least for new building, we should allow to have some products that have antimicrobial efficacy and effectiveness not on the surface but within the product in (I would say these high touch) surfaces where repetitive cleaning is physically not possible or for financial perspective not feasible. If you have an automatic cleaning, and this particular is for vancomycin resistant Enterococcus, that really helped the alternative which is also an add on is using ultraviolet (UV) light that also disinfects the surfaces because we know from this study but also from other UVC studies, that even if you have almost perfect cleaning, you have residual multiresistant bacteria. So the physical cleaning, even if it's done under supervision, is not perfect. And for certain areas, I would say for transplant units, multiresistant pathogens are an issue, for operating rooms (ORs), everywhere where people have high touch surfaces, including elevator knobs. [Sanitized] is such a product would be an add on which, if it's financially accepted and doesn't need replacement every week, is the way to go in future.

That was in the preface of this study that the identified bacteria is on public areas, like airports, train stations. They realize that bad bacteria, pathogenic bacteria are more prevalent in this area than in hospitals.

: What was the contribution of Sanitized within this study?

 Sanitized made the initial tests in the lab in order to choose the suitable PVC film composition, the formulation for running the study. And the film was provided by one of our customers located in France, Hexis, who is manufacturing self-adhesive films. We then concert in the Professor Whitmer and Professor Frei [another author, Reno Frei, MD, Division of Infectious Diseases & Hospital Epidemiology, University of Basel Hospitals & Clinics, Basel, Switzerland], we have a preliminary results and providing them the films for running the study in their hospital. That was the main goal of Sanitized, providing the right formulation, and then providing the right film for the study.

It looks quite simple, but it was not. Then putting this material safely on the screen or on the toilet seat that is physically not damaging. This was quite challenging, and the support we got was excellent. So that's the big advantage to have onsite test because in the lab, you will just have to control an active compound, but there's no physical damage. You don't have a crazy patient who does something completely wrong. You don't have less-than-perfect motivated cleaning person who scrapes on this film. This is real life. And that's the beauty of this study that it not only made it to the lab, but it made it past the clinical tests very well, which was really a surprise to us.

: Why is Sanitized focusing on the health sector at this point.

By the way, antimicrobial surfaces will never replace regular cleaning or disinfection protocols; however, it may close the gap which is left between cleaning cycle, and we are convinced at Sanitized that antimicrobial surfaces will play an important role in the future of hygiene management in health care. And, therefore, as experts in this field, we want to contribute to this important topic. We do have already a lot of our customers providing solutions, and Hexis is one of them. But we do have a lot of others providing antimicrobial treated surfaces to the hospital. However, this is done usually on a local basis. And we would expect increasing the awareness of such hygienic surfaces to the world community, and that's also the reason why Sanitized decided to adhere to the Clean Hospital project providing here with the long-term experience on integrated hygienic function to surfaces.

: Dr. Whitmer, do you have anything final to say?

 The question is always implementation; we have a lot of knowledge. But somebody has to think about if in the construction of new hospitals’ renovation, that people think about it, and we now have cleaning, we have UV light, which is very expensive and needs additional workload. So, to make it into the hospital is the society's are marked in the perfect situation to convince our hospital administration. And if they don't pay for it, or they don't want it, we are stuck, even if the science is well supported [by] all the data. So that's something that you really need people from marketing, not only for this compound. It’s a long story when 20 years ago, we just had a meeting with CDC and many experts in the field that 20 years ago, hand washing in the United States was standard of care. It took almost 20 years to convince people to do hand hygiene with an alcoholic compound. And Didier [Pittet, PhD], my colleague and friend, he dedicated his life for it. So we need people who provide science, but we also need people to convince politicians, administrators, the hospital administration to put the effort into including products that prevent common colonization of bacteria with on surfaces that are , called high touch surfaces.

: Mr. Loyrion, do you have any final thoughts?

 No, I guess the professor has said everything. I guess I'm perfectly share his point of view anyway. So we need to make the things moving on, and we have to discuss also with politicians and so on, in order to give the option to the hospital to move forwards and having hygienic surfaces wherever necesssary.

: Our sole goal for all of us—the 3 of us and every environmental hygienist, every infection preventionist--we're all there to save lives. But trying to get individuals to follow the protocols is not always easy. But that's a whole other topic. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Can antimicrobial products withstand day-to-day real-life wear and tear if the antimicrobial material is part of the product and not only a coating?  A study in Switzerland tried to find out. 

Self-disinfecting High Touch Surfaces in Practical Use

September is National Sepsis Month, and when a patient is in septic shock, it kills 34% of the time. Sepsis is a deadly, expensive, and difficult to diagnose medical condition, and often the clues within the medical record do not come together for early detection.

One tool many hospitals use is the standard systemic inflammatory response syndrome-triggered electronic health record (EHR) alerts that aid in detection. However, the detective work is still mostly by time-consuming retrospection because the information the EHR alerts send are often wrong or misleading, and health care professionals (HCPs) end up with alert-fatigue and do not pay attention to the signals. However, what if the alerts were more accurate and more often gave earlier information to those HCPs who need the information? 

 (Blessing), an integrated health system in Quincy, Illinois, was searching for an answer and selected 

 to more quickly identify and treat patients with sepsis or sepsis shock—up to 6 hours earlier—leading to possibly better patient outcomes.

a hospitalist and the chief quality and safety officer for Blessing Health spoke with 

about sepsis and describe how Blessing Health using this new innovation to manage information to pinpoint patients at risk of sepsis and save patient lives easier and faster.

: What is sepsis, and why is it so deadly?

Sepsis is the body's response to an infection. The body triggers a chain reaction, and that reaction can damage your own tissues. If left untreated, it can progress to septic shock, which is when the blood pressure drops, which can lead to severe organ problems and even death. If we intervene and give early treatment with antibiotics and IV fluids, it improves the chances for survival. But without treatment, sepsis can lead to tissue damage and even death.

Would you please describe the POC Advisor’s role?

 Point of care (POC) Advisor is a clinical decision support tool. What does that mean? Clinical decision support tools take data, usually from our electronic medical records, and turns it into actionable information to help the clinicians decide about a patient's care. They take over some of the routine tasks and can recognize changes in vital signs, changes in labs, and then warn the clinicians of potential problems or prompt suggestions for the clinical team to consider. In this case, the tool searches our medical record for signs and symptoms of possible sepsis, and then alerts the nurses and doctors taking care of the patient that sepsis might be present.

: Please walk us through the Blessing Health collaborative approach.How does the POC Advisor fit in?

 Blessing has been working with a multidisciplinary sepsis committee for more than a decade. The surviving sepsis campaign came out with international guidelines back in 2004. Then in 2011, we revamped our multidisciplinary team, and it has met monthly ever since. It's currently led by a fulltime registered nurse sepsis care coordinator. The committee meets and collaborates to produce standardized evidence-based order sets. We have a nurse-driven sepsis screening protoco; we have a nurse-driven testing, order-set protocol. We have a code sepsis alert that can go off that can get clinicians to the bedside quickly to assess the patient, implemented technology to assess fluid responsiveness in our patients. All of these different interventions have allowed us to demonstrate significant improvement in our sepsis core measure and our sepsis mortality. But we still have opportunity in the population of patients who don't have sepsis on admission. They're admitted to the hospital for other reasons, and then they develop sepsis. So POC Advisor will provide one more layer to helping our clinicians recognize when a patient is starting to develop signs and symptoms of sepsis, especially on our medical-surgical floors, and then give an alert to our clinicians, so they can make timely decisions.

: Do you have an infection preventionist on staff, and now does that individual interact with the POC advisor?

 The role that would be closest to what you're referring to would be our sepsis coordinator. She's a registered nurse, and she's in charge of our sepsis program. She chairs our sepsis committee meetings. She's developed a lot of the tools that I mentioned before, but she's the one right now piloting with the POC Advisor, getting all the alerts on any patient inhouse who fires a risk for possible sepsis. Then she's reaching out either looking in the EMR or reaching out to the bedside staff to investigate to confirm if sepsis is present, and then to notify clinicians that the alert suggests possible sepsis and when the patient needs more of a workup.

: How is this new approach making an impact at Blessing Health?

 It's early to come to any conclusions about outcomes. But I think [POC Advisor] is one more layer. It's a tool that can alert our staff to be aware that there appear to be some changes in that patient, whether it's vital signs or labs or new signs or symptoms of infections. Like I said, the population that we hope to impact the most is those who aren't admitted with sepsis. We don't know that they have sepsis, and then they develop signs and symptoms after admission. So that's the population that we're targeting.

: Of the patients with sepsis, do more come to the hospital with that diagnosis or with another unrelated diagnosis?

Most of our cases, though, would come in with a known diagnosis of sepsis, and they're recognized and treated in the emergency room. Then there's a smaller group of patients who come in, and they might have pneumonia or an infection, or they might not, but then they develop or start to exhibit signs of [sepsis] later, and those are the ones who are a little harder to capture.

A sepsis diagnosis is expensive and deadly, and early detection and treatment are key to saving lives. However, sepsis is not always easy to diagnose early, so a new advanced analytics surveillance tool can increase the chances of an improved outcome. 

Sepsis: Earlier Detection With New Clinical Surveillance Tool

Healthy indoor air quality is vital because airborne threats from viruses like COVID-19, fungi, bacteria, carcinogenic chemicals, and other pollutants. These dangers infect wellbeing, health, and functioning of the occupants of the structure, including 

“Indoor air quality (IAQ) is in focus because of this realization that there can be 

 that not only are not healthy, and people can get sick, and even die, but it also threatens everyone's way of life.” Jason DiBona, CEO of AeroClean Technologies tells 

) in an exclusive interview. “[It is] something that can be transmitted in the air, whether you're at home or in your offices, or anywhere where you share indoor air. When you think about air quality, specifically indoor air quality, is becoming even more important.”

DiBona explains “In the United States alone, somewhere in the range of 2 million hospital acquired infections happened. There are health care associated infections, not just in hospitals, but in the health care span. Somewhere around 100,000 people who get those infections die on an annual basis. Some portion of that can be attributed to airborne or aerosolized pathogens. So indoor air quality, specifically, infectious airborne control in medical facilities, has life-changing consequences.”

, and other acute care rooms must be filtrated with a HEPA filter, but as DiBona mentions, other areas are at risk too, like waiting rooms and elevators.

View the full interview with DiBona above to learn more about why air quality is important, and what can be done to improve air quality in hospitals, businesses, and schools.

Viruses and other contaminants affect the air quality in health care, businesses, and homes. Listen to ICT®’s discussion about what should be done, and how one company is tackling the issue.  


Video Series

Indoor Air Quality Improved by a New Class II Medical Device

Even though the germicidal effects of ultraviolet light were first discovered in 1877, currently in the health care industry, a debate of the efficacy of ultraviolet-C light (UV-C) technology continues. Also, with some investigators publishing studies showing it is 

 and others not, the question comes down to which company’s technology works and what 

. Are the studies the companies are using their own, done by an independent research firm, or are the companies using competitors’ data? What generation of UV-C technology are the investigators using?

In the second of 2 segments of this exclusive 

) interview with Gunner Lyslo, founder and CEO of Surfacide, continues the discussion on where the industry is going and what questions for health care facilities, schools, businesses, and others should ask when they are looking for UVC technology to keep their employees and visitors safe.

, some individuals still are hesitant to consider UV-C technology. Lyslo pushes back and says that second generation technology (like Surfacide) demonstrates that the technology is effective.

“It's an incredibly important technology [and] disinfection modality. And if used in an evidence-based way, with the proper indications for use, it will have a tremendous impact to the 

 of all those end users and all those individuals who are entering those spaces. [This is true] whether it would be a hospital, which hospitals are still first and foremost to [Surfacide], because that's where you're dealing with an immunocompromised patient population, as well as you're dealing with an environmental services team are frontline health care workers who have numerous workplace stresses.”

The first part of the interview with Lyslo is 

With the debate swirling around the efficacy and safety of UV-C technology, an individual needs which generation the product is. Infection Control Today® continues its ongoing special reporting on UV-C technology.

Ultraviolet C Light Technology Debate: Are First and Second Generation Equal? 

 wide-ranging coverage of the infection prevention and control world. Everything from interviews with known opinion leaders, to the news that infection preventionists and other health care professionals can use on their jobs.

Digital Wristband Provides a Fuller Picture of Hand Hygiene Compliance in an Intensive Care Unit

The wearable wristband works with location sensors throughout the hospital to track HH and HCW behavior, and then pairs with an app that analyzes individual performance.

Innovative Gowns Fill Wishlist of Sustainability, Style, Design

Collaboration of a team from Inova Health with La Forma Medical developed an isolation gown that was cooler, better fitting, and more environmentally-friendly than disposables.

IPC Practices Demonstrate Higher Hand Hygiene Rates in Skilled Nursing Facility

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending June 17.


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