Ekahau Inc., the worldwide leader in high performance Wi-Fi-based Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), announced that it is introducing a Wi-Fi Hand Hygiene Monitoring solution that automatically monitors hand hygiene of employees in the healthcare facilities to prevent the spread of hospital acquired infections and other transmittable diseases.

wi-fi hand hygiene monitor

The hand hygiene solution combines Ekahau location-enabled staff badges and Ekahau beacons that are embedded into GOJO’s SmartLink™ Series Dispensers located throughout a hospital. The staff badges – which also are commonly used for staff messaging, workflow and safety applications – enable the RTLS system to automatically monitor staff-patient interactions, as well as when the staff member washes his or her hands before and after interacting with a patient in order to calculate compliance based on hospital policy. By leveraging the two-way communications capabilities of the Ekahau RTLS system, staff members can receive reminders and status information on the text display of their badges to help improve hand hygiene compliance. To ensure full compliance, the Ekahau transmitters that are integrated into the dispensers will only be activated when hands are sanitized, eliminating any false information from being collected.

The Hand Hygiene Monitoring solution consists of these components

“Hand hygiene is a significant concern, particularly in the healthcare market where, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital acquired infections add more than $30 billion to annual healthcare costs and result in almost 100,000 deaths,” said Tuomo Rutanen, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development at Ekahau. “We believe that Ekahau’s real-time location tracking technology – which is already in use at more than 300 hospitals worldwide and works over the customer’s existing Wi-Fi networks – has been integrated with GOJO hand sanitizing units to provide hospitals a way to ensure staff is compliant with hand washing procedures.”

”Today, most healthcare institutions still go through a manual observation method to collect and report hand hygiene compliance rates. This manual observation method typically requires significant cost and effort, but rarely yields timely and accurate information on hand hygiene compliance,” said Dave Mackay, Healthcare vice president at GOJO Industries. ”When you consider the potential for Ekahau’s real-time location tracking technology, enabled by GOJO’s touch-free dispensing systems, to deliver real-time hand hygiene monitoring at an individual care level, it’s exciting to think about the difference this could make for infection control.”

Read more about this new wi-fi hand hygiene monitor

or at the Ekahau company website