Kontakt.io, the leader in healthcare RTLS and digital transformation, announced the release of a new Hand Hygiene solution. The cloud-based solution, delivered as a managed service, goes beyond Joint Commission compliance and empowers caregivers to actively engage in infection prevention while providing innovative tools for infection prevention teams to track the spread of contagious diseases and manage dispenser availability.
Poor hand hygiene accounts for 20% of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), leading to serious health complications, prolonged hospital stays, increased healthcare costs, and even death. Treating HAIs costs the U.S. healthcare systems up to $45B in total or $45,000 per licensed bed per year.
Despite the clear urgency, today’s hand hygiene compliance rates remain strikingly low. The primary barrier is the intense workload of clinical staff and unpredictable emergencies that require immediate attention. Additionally, malfunctioning and empty hand sanitizer dispensers further discourage staff compliance.
“As a nurse, I feel the immense pressures and relentless schedules that can hinder hand hygiene compliance. Reactive and punitive measures only add to the burden, which is why we should create solutions that care teams can depend on,” said Rhonda Collins, DNP, RN, FAAN, Chief Nursing Officer at Kontakt.io. “This new Hand Hygiene solution gives proactive, gentle reminders before patient care without disrupting staff workflow. Through gamification, we can turn hand hygiene into a positive, incentivized practice. Our goal is to support and encourage caregivers, enhancing both their well-being and patient safety.”
Key benefits of Kontakt.io’s Hand Hygiene solution include:
- Real-time monitoring and reminders. Powered by Kontakt.io’s Staff-Safe enabled Smart Badge 3 – the latest wearable BLE cardholder for staff – the solution leverages real-time location (RTLS) to track staff in and out of patient rooms and identify every wash-in or wash-out opportunity. The hand sanitizer dispenser module sends real-time in-room reminders before staff proceed to care activities.
- Simplified reporting. Cloud analytics deliver compliance data and trends across departments and facilities at a glance and generate compliance reports for Joint Commission requirements at the click of a button. It allows hospitals to drill down and compare data by geography, facility, department, individual, time, and more to further investigate hidden patterns and risks.
- Compliance gamification. The solution incorporates gamification in the Kio Nurse mobile app to help staff track and earn rewards for participation, resulting in increased hand hygiene engagement and fostering positive behavior change.
- Automated dispenser management. Introducing dispenser M2M, the Hand Hygiene solution notifies users when a soap or sanitizing gel dispenser is empty, broken, or malfunctioning, ensuring that dispensers are operational and ready to use at all times.
- Infection chain tracing. Using interaction-based contact tracing, the solution helps infection prevention teams roll back time, identify and isolate at-risk subjects, and contribute to rapid containment, targeted treatment, and learning.
“We have reimagined and democratized hand hygiene compliance so caregivers become stakeholders in this positive behavioral change,” said Rom Eizenberg, Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Product Innovation at Kontakt.io. “The Hand Hygiene solution is part of our continuous investment in an AI platform that serves as a central nervous system for hospitals. By consolidating enterprise data, we help health systems better connect the dots and gain previously inaccessible insights to improve care, safety, and revenue.”
About Kontakt.io
Kontakt.io optimizes processes and resources by revealing how patients move through care delivery. Using AI, IoT, and RTLS, we help healthcare systems uncover waste, streamline capacity, improve workflows, and help staff and patients feel seen and valued. Solving for more than 20 use cases in care operations, we offer a single platform that is easy to deploy and scale with fast time to value. Since 2013, Kontakt.io has provided solutions to +32,000 end users, delivered via +1,200 partners, and deployed +4 million IoT devices in the field.
