Biotechnology Healthcare - June 2008 - (Page 59) less effective and more time-con- have a surveillance system for insuming retrospective analyses of pa- fection tracking (Martin 2005), tient charts. It also frees up the time which must be in place by the end of infection-control practitioners 2008. These systems are required to spend in collecting and counting be compatible with the Centers for data — they can now focus on pre- Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Netvention and intervention. Benchmarking capabilities allow work, which collects data to estabhospitals to compare infection rates lish national benchmarks and to by unit throughout the hospital and share information among hospitals with other facilities throughout the on epidemiology and infection patcountry. MedMined’s Nosocomial terns. Most systems already meet Infection Marker generates HAI re- this standard by integrating CDC ports, offering consistent measure- definitions into their software. In addition to MedMined, two ments over time. In addition, antimicrobial management services other key companies in this market help to correct the use of antibiotics. are TheraDoc and Cereplex. TherAccording to MedMined, this fea- aDoc’s Infection Control Assistant is ture alone resulted in a 1.3-day re- used by Johns Hopkins Hospital, in duced length of stay, improved pa- Baltimore, and Rhode Island Hostient outcomes, and reduced costs pital, in Providence, and was recently acquired by Thomas Jefferson (Cardinal Health 2008). The potential cost savings offered University Hospital and Allegheny by these surveillance systems General Hospital, both in Pennsylmakes significant business sense. vania. Cereplex offers two main MedMined not only can identify products: Setnet, which automates nearly all HAIs, it also can calculate surveillance for infection control, the cost of treating them. At three and PharmWatch, which offers the hospitals in the Evanston North- ability to manage and optimize anwestern Healthcare system, in Illi- tibiotic therapy. These programs aim nois, six months of surveillance by to enhance infection control and curb MedMined detected a 5.8 percent antibiotic resistance. infection rate and $5 million in unreimbursed costs of treating HAIs. In the next six months, the system helped reduce infections by 223 cases, cutting the infection rate to 5 percent and saving the hospital system $618,000 in avoided expenses — $3 for every $1 spent on infection surveillance (Morrissey 2004). In the past, only the most technologically savvy hospitals were interested in these advanced datamining programs; today, they are increasingly mainstream and may become even more so as the legal environment changes. Pennsylvania, for instance, has become the first state to mandate that hospitals BD GeneOhm’s MRSA assay Radio frequency surveillance. Vecna Medical is a company that takes infection control one step further by integrating radio frequency identification (RFID) technology into its surveillance system. According to its Web site, Vecna believes this technology will enable hospitals to trace the spread of pathogens by tracking staff and patient movements through the use of RFID tags, thus averting the spread of infectious outbreaks. By determining the chain of transmission of HAIs, infection-control practitioners can implement changes to prevent further outbreaks (Vecna 2008). Radio frequency (RF) is not a new technology within the healthcare industry. For example, Censis Technologies’ Censitrac uses RF in its instrument tracking system. Censitrac has the ability to locate any instrument, container, or piece of equipment by placing a permanent laser marker on each individual item, allowing these items to be traced to their last known location. InnerWireless’s system then provides a wireless distribution that “pumps” RF signals throughout a hospital to enable applications such Courtesy and © Becton, Dickinson and Company MAY/JUNE 2008 · BIOTECHNOLOGY HEALTHCARE 59
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