Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming part of health care, but for infection preventionists (IPs), the question is no longer simply whether to use AI. The challenge is learning how to use it safely, recognize its limitations, and preserve the human expertise essential to patient safety.
During APIC 2026 in Nashville, Bassel Molaeb, MPH, CIC, FAPIC, AL-CIP, the health care advisor, trainer & infection prevention and control consultant, The Compass Health Consultancy, Dubai, UAE
PhD Candidate in Public Health, Lancaster University, UKwith experience across the Middle East, addressed that challenge in a presentation with an intentionally reassuring title: “Take It Easy: Artificial Intelligence Will Be Your New Best Friend.”
In a follow-up interview, Carole W. Kamangu, MPH, RN, CIC, a contributing editor of Infection Control Today®, spoke with Molaeb about AI-assisted surveillance, hallucinations, education and training, environmental cleaning, process monitoring, AI literacy, and why IPs need a voice in organizational AI decisions.
Top 3 Takeaways
- AI should augment, not replace, infection preventionists. It can automate surveillance and identify patterns, but IPs must validate findings, apply clinical context, and determine what action is appropriate.
- AI literacy is becoming an IPC competency. IPs do not need to become data scientists, but they should understand prompting, validation, governance, and privacy, as well as how to recognize hallucinated or inaccurate outputs.
- AI could strengthen the IP’s leadership role. By accelerating analysis and providing stronger data for decision-making, AI may give IPs more time and evidence to focus on prevention, education, collaboration, and strategic leadership.
Reducing Workload Without Replacing Judgment
For IPs facing growing responsibilities, staffing pressures, and enormous amounts of data, Molaeb sees AI primarily as a way to strengthen existing capabilities.
“AI can help in reducing the fatigue that is associated with surveillance,” Molaeb said. “It helps us also to prioritize the potential risks and to automate the routine work that we perform on a daily basis.”
However, he emphasized that AI should support rather than replace professional judgment.
Kamangu, also a health systems and infection prevention strategist, and the CEO and founder of Dumontel Healthcare Consulting, agreed that distinction is critical. “AI is a tool. It's a system. It's an application,” she said. Infection prevention, she noted, still requires “critical thinking, leadership, collaboration.”
Surveillance illustrates both AI's potential and its limitations. An AI-enabled system might detect a cluster of similar positive cultures within a unit and alert an IP to a potential outbreak. But the signal could also result from duplicate records, increased screening, or a change in laboratory processes.
That is where the IP becomes indispensable.
Molaeb said IPs must “distinguish the true signal from the false signal,” validate source data, apply appropriate surveillance definitions, and evaluate cases within their clinical and epidemiologic context.
AI Hallucinations Create a Patient Safety Concern
The same caution applies to generative AI. Molaeb pointed to IPs using tools such as ChatGPT or Claude to find guidelines, evidence-based practices, or research references. AI can generate incorrect information, commonly described as a hallucination, including references that do not exist.
“By double-checking, by validation, and referring to the original references, an IP can configure that and know it,” Molaeb said.
Kamangu argued that this makes foundational IPC knowledge more, not less, important.
“You cannot use an AI tool and be 100% proficient with it if you don't have the foundation,” she said. Without that expertise, an IP may accept an incorrect AI-generated answer as fact, potentially creating patient safety and cost consequences.
“We need to keep using our creativity, our critical thinking as humans, and make sure we know the basics and the foundation of the work,” Kamangu added.
From Surveillance to PPE Training
Molaeb described several areas where AI could complement infection prevention work. Surveillance systems can analyze laboratory results, microbiology data, device utilization, antimicrobial use, and clinical documentation to flag unusual patterns for review.
AI can also support education through simulations and computer vision. Molaeb described tools used to train health care personnel in hand hygiene and PPE donning and doffing.
If a staff member misses a step, “AI can indicate that,” he explained. Traditional one-to-one observation may not consistently capture every movement, whereas AI can make errors immediately visible, allowing correction “before the practice reaches the patient care and could do a patient harm.”
Environmental services represents another opportunity. AI-enabled monitoring may identify frequently missed high-touch surfaces or variations in cleaning practices. But workload, room design, patient acuity, and workflow can influence those patterns, meaning human interpretation remains necessary.
“The IP's role will give the context, will do the validation, and enhance the final decision-making,” Molaeb said.
AI Literacy Is Becoming an IPC Competency
Avoiding AI altogether may create its own risks. Molaeb warned that organizations restricting sanctioned AI tools could unintentionally encourage “shadow AI,” in which employees independently use unapproved applications.
Without basic AI literacy, staff could share sensitive information, construct ineffective prompts, or accept inaccurate results.
“IPs, they do not need to become data scientists and experts in AI,” Molaeb said. “But they need to understand how to question, how to build a prompt, how to validate, and how to use AI tools safely.”
Successful implementation also cannot belong solely to IT. Molaeb called for collaboration involving IP leaders, frontline users, IT, clinical informatics, quality and patient safety, privacy, cybersecurity, and executive leadership.
“If the end user is not involved in the process, it's really hard to implement and scale,” Kamangu added, particularly when health care organizations are handling sensitive patient and enterprise information.
AI Could Strengthen the IP's Seat at the Table
Rather than diminishing the IP's role, Molaeb believes AI proficiency could increase infection prevention's influence within health care organizations.
Competencies in data interpretation, validation, governance, and prompt engineering can help IPs generate faster analyses and stronger evidence for decisions.
“AI may automate parts of the surveillance,” he said, “but it cannot replace the IP's clinical context, their leadership, or accountability for prevention.”
His final message returned to the reassuring premise of his APIC presentation.
“The goal is not simply to adopt AI,” Molaeb said, “but to use it safely, responsibly, and meaningfully to improve patient and health care worker safety.”
And, he added, perhaps IPs really can “take it easy, because artificial intelligence is here, and it will be our new best friend in our practice.”
