A breakthrough in hand hygiene quality improvement

SureWash™, a Dublin based hand hygiene training technology company has supported more than 200 hospitals over the last 10 years to achieve validated competence in the World Health Organisation (WHO)[1] hand hygiene technique, reducing the risk of infections and improving patient outcomes. SureWash™ units use cutting edge computer vision technology to build hand hygiene muscle memory by giving real-time feedback to learners.

SureWash’s™ new device provides real-time feedback using automatic video auditing (AVA) of the users’ hand hygiene technique. These AVA devices may be placed over sinks to measure the quantity and quality of hand hygiene and if there are problems, the system provides real-time training to the user on the spot. The video images never leave the device making them fully GDPR compliant.

The Surewash™ devices were used in a clinical trial within the NHS and it increased the quality of hand hygiene by 197% and the number of hand wash events by 147%. The results were published in the American Journal of Infection Control in February 2020.

SureWash™ partnered with Intel and CEA-Leti to develop this low-cost technology platform based on Intel’s MyriadX™ technology. The opportunities for this SureWash product is extensive as it can be placed above all hospital or kitchen sinks combining both hand hygiene training and monitoring in a new, innovative way. This SureWash™ device is the first system that is capable of monitoring both quality and instances of hand hygiene in real time.

The importance of infection prevention

COVID-19 has raised everyone’s awareness of the importance of hand hygiene, however, well before it arrived, 9 million infections occurred each year in European hospitals and care facilities [2], and in the US, hospital acquired infections kill 100,000 patients each year and cost $45 Billion. In fact, 7% of all hospital patients in developed countries acquire infections (HAI).

The World Health Organisation (WHO)[1] estimate that 50% of infections could be prevented with better hand hygiene and to help reduce hand acquired infections, the WHO have developed a seven step handwashing protocol that mitigates the risk of bacteria remaining on washed hands.

The Surewash™ AVA system has embedded this WHO handwashing protocol into the video auditing system. For example, in the hospital environment, the goal is to increase staff compliance to the protocol, thus reduce hospital acquired infections such as Clostridium difficile, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Acinetobacter baumannii and thus avoid the need for antibiotics to treat infections. This improves patient outcomes, reduces hospital stay and overall results in lives saved and significant cost avoidance.

SureWash training product outcomes

These individual AVA devices can be connected over a standard network, enabling them to report anonymised compliance data which enables hospital infection control to visualise utilisation, track compliance, compare sites and enables early invention thus preventing the outbreak of infections.

FED4SAE support and opportunity

FED4SAE provided the perfect opportunity for SureWash™ work with Intel Movidius engineers who provided assistance on the Intel’s MyriadX™ VPU (Visual Processing Units), OpenVino (Open Visual Inference and Neural network Optimization) and Realsense™ depth sensing camera technologies.

This enables prototypes to be created which were deployed, tested and evaluated in the CEA’s IRT-Nanoelec testbed facility where both functional testing including (GDPR) privacy, cybersecurity compliance as well as usability analysis and user acceptance testing with potential customers was completed. SureWash™ also received support in business modelling, market insights and design to cost from Blumorpho and CEA-Open Innovation team.

CEA connected Surewash™ to a large Organisation of Nursing Homes in France who also evaluated and provided valuable feedback on the prototype devices. Intel has introduced SureWash™ to a number of potential partners to accelerate its path to market.