Combating healthcare-associated infections with advanced location technology

A new strain of coronavirus (COVID-19) is spreading across the globe, and it shows no signs of slowing down. People experiencing symptoms are encouraged to seek the help of healthcare providers – but this puts other patients, visitors and staff at risk of getting sick as well. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently advised healthcare facilities to enhance infection prevention and control practices in an effort to reduce its spread. There is a valid fear that if COVID-19 isn’t contained, it could turn into a pandemic.

The CDC cites HAIs as the most common adverse hospital-related event affecting one in 25 patients during their hospital stays and resulting in more than 99,000 deaths per year. Many healthcare systems seemingly still struggle to address HAIs, and many times, healthcare leaders simply aren’t familiar with how real-time location (RTLS) technology can be used to support infection control.

Healthcare systems that manually monitor infection prevention related processes leave room for human error and typically suffer from increased rates of infection. Conversely, systems that leverage more modern solutions can better contain HAIs, lower associated costs, and offer patients, visitors and staff greater peace of mind. Let’s consider some popular use cases: