Peter Pronovost to Join the Board of Directors of Cantel Medical Corp.

Cantel Medical Corp. today announced the election of Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, to serve as an independent member of Cantel's board of directors.

"Dr. Pronovost is a world-renowned leader of patient safety and quality, serving as a practicing anesthesiologist and critical care physician, professor, researcher, lecturer and international patient safety leader," says Charles M. Diker, chairman of Cantel. "His wealth of experience in the fields of patient safety, ICU and healthcare, evidence-based medicine, and the measurement and evaluation of safety efforts and procedures will be invaluable support and guidance for Cantel in its continuing efforts to promote and lead in infection prevention and control products and services."

Pronovost serves as a professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine), in the Bloomberg School of Public Health (Department of Health Policy and Management) and in the School of Nursing. Pronovost has lectured and authored approximately 350 articles and chapters in the fields of patient safety, ICU care, quality healthcare, evidence-based medicine, and the measurement and evaluation of safety efforts.

For his pioneering work in patient safety and infection prevention, Pronovost was honored by being named in 2008 to Time magazine's Time 100, which was the fifth annual list of the world's 100 most influential people: leaders, thinkers, heroes, artists, scientists, and more. Alarmed at the increasing trend in hospital-acquired infections in patients at Johns Hopkins where he was a critical care researcher in 2001, Pronovost developed a simple tool for doctors, a checklist that had never existed before, to remind doctors of each necessary step in performing routine procedures. By following this checklist, the medical errors that lead to infections were drastically reduced. Pronovost's published research resulted in the medical community becoming much more aware of the causes of and the need for infection prevention and control, and saved many lives through the wonderfully simple but necessary checklist.

"I'm excited to be joining the board of Cantel Medical, a company I believe is as passionate and dedicated to infection prevention and control as I am," Pronovost says. "I look forward to working with Cantel Medical to further advance the science and awareness in the future."