[02/22/10]
CenTrak, a leading provider of Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) used for tracking equipment, patients and staff announced the release of its new Hand Hygiene Compliance System. The system leverages CenTrak's certainty-based RTLS, that delivers room and bed-level location via a combination of a second generation infrared (Gen2IR) technology and RF. CenTrak offers the industry's only primarily battery powered RTLS (5+ years of battery life), eliminating the need for in-room wiring and enabling a quick and easy installation.
Hospitals are increasingly recognizing the role of hand hygiene compliance (HHC) in the reduction of healthcare-acquired infections (HAI) and overall patient safety. According to the Centers for Disease Control, HAIs account for roughly 1.7 million infections and 99,000 deaths, annually. The direct costs associated with HAIs for US hospitals are estimated to be tens of billions of dollars per year. It is estimated that anywhere from 30-70 percent of HAIs can be prevented by following HHC policies. However, most hospitals estimate that their health-care workers' compliance rates are below 50%. Furthermore, measuring HHC has traditionally been a very manual process consisting of periodic audits and studies which capture just a small portion of potential events, and with questionable accuracy. CenTrak's Hand Hygiene Compliance System introduces a cost effective means of automatically capturing compliance and non-compliance events.
"CenTrak's RTLS infrastructure was built to provide certainty-based room and bed-level location for both assets and people, so we had the core attributes of the required system already built into our technology," said Ari Naim, Ph.D., President and CEO of CenTrak. "We are pleased we can help address such an important issue for our customers that not only impacts the safety of patients but also the bottom line of these hospitals that are already operating in a financially challenged environment."
The CenTrak Hand Hygiene Compliance System can be deployed on a stand alone basis or in conjunction with CenTrak's full RTLS. Battery powered Dispenser Monitors can be mounted to any dispenser, canister, pump, or sink to track their usage. The system automatically captures a specific caregiver's badge ID and entry to and exit from patient care areas along with hand hygiene events, based upon hospital determined compliance business rules. The Dispenser Monitor communicates each event to the network and records each caregiver's compliance performance. All of the recorded data is stored on CenTrak's local or hosted server and can be accessed by compliance management and reporting solutions.
About CenTrak DualTrak Technology
CenTrak's core RTLS differs from legacy technologies in its combined use of a patented combination of second-generation infrared (Gen2IR) and active RFID technology called DualTrak. Battery powered Monitors (5 years+ battery life) transmit a unique room number using Gen2IR which is received by any tag in that room. The tag communicates the room number and its own unique ID via RF to the CenTrak Location Server using a hospital's existing wired or Wi-Fi network, where it can be accessed in real-time by hospital personnel and integrated with third party solution providers.
Like light, Gen2IR will not pass through walls and does not suffer from traditional infrared line-of-sight limitations. Therefore, when a tag reads a room number, there are no errors. This is certainty-based RTLS. Unlike estimation-based information, certainty-based location data can be used by hospitals to make important improvements to process flow and automate decision making. Most healthcare workflow improvements can only be realized when the location data is certainty-based.
About CenTrak
CenTrak is a leading provider of accurate, multi-functional, and cost-effective tracking infrastructure for healthcare facilities. The CenTrak Real Time Location System (RTLS) infrastructure uniquely combines Gen2IR and active RFID technologies to deliver certainty-based or error free data, a requirement for workflow and other important applications. As the only predominantly battery-powered RTLS technology, CenTrak offers a simple and non-invasive installation unattainable with legacy solutions. CenTrak RTLS is currently operating in millions of square feet at dozens of world-class healthcare sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and India. For more information about CenTrak, please visit www.centrak.com.
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