It is well established that improving hand hygiene is the most effective way to reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). However, the ability to improve hand hygiene in hospitals has been severely limited by the lack of accurate, automated and affordable technology to monitor personnel compliance. Grand River Hospital (GRH) is seeking a solution that can support both hand hygiene compliance auditing and monitoring, with the expectation to increase hand hygiene compliance and help investigate the routes of infection transmission thereby improving patient care.
CAN Health is posting this Call for Innovation to seek out qualified Canadian companies who can meet the following desired outcomes. Grand River Hospital and CAN Health reserves the right to not move forward with this project at its full discretion and in particular if there are no qualified Canadian companies that can reasonably meet the desired outcomes.
To qualify for a CAN Health project, the company must meet ALL of the following criteria:
- Headquartered in Canada (additional criteria apply for companies not headquartered in Canada)
- Majority ownership of both the company and the solution by Canadians
- Solution at Technology Readiness Level (TRL)>7, indicating actual technology completed and qualified through tests and demonstrations
- All the data and AI models (if applicable) must be hosted in Canada and comply with all the Canadian privacy regulations
- Possess all regulatory approvals required for commercialization, such as Health Canada approval
- Completion of all required clinical validity/unity studies
- No need for policy changes to be widely adopted
- Strong use cases in the Canadian health care system
If the company is not headquartered in Canada or the solution is not majority owned by Canadians, additional criteria apply:
- Independent autonomy over business operations and product development (for subsidiaries, affiliates or distributors)
- High Canadian job creation potential, especially in executive and senior management positions
- Commitment of over 70% of contract value to Canada
During the company selection process, preference is given to companies/solutions fully owned by Canadians, followed by those majority owned by Canadians, and finally international companies with a significant presence and economic impact in Canada.
Problem Statement:
The hand hygiene rate at Grand River Hospital has dropped since 2019. This drop in hand hygiene compliance at GRH was primarily attributed to frequent staff turnover, change fatigue, workload, focus change during the pandemic, and perceived awareness. Internal audits have shown that the staff have knowledge regarding hand hygiene. However, they struggle to understand the impact of missing a single hand-washing opportunity. Additionally, there is a lack of trust in the auditing process, the statistics, and the transmission data.
Objectives:
By implementing a Hand Hygiene Compliance solution, GRH expects to increase and sustain the adherence to hand hygiene standards to improve patient outcomes, with a smooth adoption across the acute care Medicine Unit.
Essential (mandatory) outcomes:
By implementing a Hand Hygiene Compliance solution, GRH expects to:
- Achieve a group hand hygiene compliance before patient contact averaging in excess of 90% (from an anticipated baseline compliance of less than 60%)
- Determine the usefulness of the solution’s advanced data analytics in helping investigate the routes of infection transmission (e.g. traffic patterns to the room will be examined)
- Achieve a 95%+ acceptance by caregiving staff as a helpful product that fits within their workflow
Additional information:
Further development may be required to determine detailed target metrics.
The maximum duration for a project resulting from this Challenge is: 12 months.
HAIs affect 5% of hospitalized patients, often leading to prolonged hospital stays, increased costs, and, in some cases, preventable deaths. It is well established that improving hand hygiene is the most effective way to reduce HAIs. However, traditional methods of monitoring hand hygiene compliance are limited by resource availability, are labor-intensive, and the data is not always trusted. These methods are increasingly ineffective and unsustainable in meeting current demands. Therefore, an automated solution is required.
