by Brianna Crandall — August 28, 2019 — Ecolab, a provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services in 170+ countries, continues to expand its healthcare offerings with advanced digital capabilities to support improved patient health, room cleanliness, and the increasing need for process and cost efficiencies in the healthcare industry.
According to statistics cited by Ecolab, every year, millions of patients globally acquire a healthcare-associated infection (HAI). In a single year, 7% to 10% of all patients will acquire an HAI, and more than one million of those patients will die from their infections, including 75,000 in the US — more than the annual deaths from auto accidents and homicides combined. Hospitals also incur millions of dollars of ancillary costs and longer patient stays due to HAIs, multiplying the length of stay two to three times and totaling $35 billion to $45 billion annually of extra cost in the US alone.
Ecolab’s digital dashboards provide visibility into hygiene behaviors and overall cleanliness; use predictive analytics to help forecast and reduce infection rates; and identify specific areas for improvement. Image courtesy Ecolab
Ecolab Healthcare helps thousands of hospitals mitigate the risks associated with HAIs through programmatic solutions that combine innovative solutions, service, training and process support to deliver cleaner, safer hospital environments for both patients and staff.
The latest addition to Ecolab Healthcare’s portfolio of solutions are digital dashboards, which will provide greater visibility, measurement and analysis of current practices, including predictive analytics to help forecast and reduce infection rates.
The digital dashboards are designed to gather millions of data points around hand hygiene compliance, surgical instrument cleanliness in the central sterile department, high-touch object cleanliness, and room turnover time for patient and operating rooms. They will help turn this data into immediately actionable insights at the system, hospital, unit, individual and even object levels.
Gail Peterson, vice president of Marketing for Ecolab Healthcare, explained:
Our dashboards will help empower hospitals to promote cleaner and safer environments by helping to break the chain of infection while also reducing ancillary costs. This new level of insight, combined with our best-in-class chemistry, will enable repeatable workflow enhancements that are supported by our on-site professionals who can train staff, drive standardization and help customers take appropriate corrective action when and where it is needed.
Data from Ecolab Healthcare solutions will populate the dashboards to help provide greater visibility into hygiene behaviors and overall cleanliness, and to help identify specific areas for improvement. Ecolab’s Hand Hygiene Compliance Monitoring System and the Operating Room and Patient Room Programs utilizing DAZO monitoring and Central Sterile Process Indicators all connect with Ecolab’s digital dashboards, helping to improve measurements for compliance levels, operational efficiencies and turnover time while helping to reduce HAI risk.
Ecolab serves more than 8,700 hospitals and healthcare systems in more than 90 countries worldwide. To learn more about Ecolab’s Healthcare solutions and services, visit the company’s website.
