Principal Investigators:

Chris Hermann, PhD

Jana Stockwell, MD

Kate Ellingson, PhD

The Need:

The lack of hand hygiene compliance remains the number one cause of hospital acquired infections (HAIs). This is a serious health and economic issue that affects over 2 million people, results in 99,000 deaths, and costs over $4.5 billion per year. Pediatric patients have a up to a 40% incidence of HAIs and are among those at greatest risk as they do not have fully developed immune systems. Hand sanitization is best prevention for HAIs, but despite the importance hand hygiene compliance remains poor among providers.  Failure by physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers to sanitize their hands between patient contact is one of the leading causes of hospital acquired infections (HAI), including pneumonia, wound infections and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA). 

The Device:

This device will improve and monitor hand sanitizer compliance among providers with an audio recording reminder and compliance tracking feature. It provides a low cost and highly customizable solution to this problem that has the potential to reduce the costs associated with both treating HAIs and compliance monitoring that is required for accreditation bodies.

How has APDC helped?

This project is currently funded by the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium. The consortium has provided advice to leverage our grant by applying to other grants. The consortium sponsors have facilitated the discussions with the FDA concerning the classification of our device. When the project joined the consortium the device was in the prototyping stage of development.

Progress of Device Development