The University of Auckland

Project #24: Remote Monitoring of Handwashing Practice in Hospitals

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Description:

This project has been proposed by Dr. Maneesh Deva, a paediatrician at Waitemata Hospital

Poor handwashing practices in hospitals are linked to health care-associated infections, which affect 1 in 25 patients. The World Health Organization estimates that these infections are responsible for financial losses on the order of tens of billions of dollars and that complications arising from these infections lead to millions of deaths annually. Fifteen seconds of handwashing can change these statistics by removing sanitizer-resistant pathogens, like Clostridium dificile.

An agile technology is sought that will not only remotely monitor the frequency of handwashing in the hospital but also provide healthcare workers with a visual display of the elapsed time of handwashing.

 The key challenges will be: programming and assembling an Arduino-compatible motion detector, differentiating motion near a sink from handwashing, encapsulating the unit in a water-resistant housing that can be sanitized, adapting to the various sink geometries within the hospital, analysing the accuracy of signal detection and demonstrate a mapping capability of handwashing behaviour.

Center for Disease Control: https://www.cdc.gov/handhygiene/index.html

World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/en/



Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

Prerequisites

None

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