DebMed Announces US Patent

CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- DebMed®, creator of the world's first electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, today announced the issuance of US Patent # 8,427,323 by the US Patent & Trademark Office for the technology integrated within the DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System). 

The DebMed GMS measures the hand hygiene compliance of physicians, nurses, therapists or other healthcare workers who come into contact with patients in hospitals and healthcare facilities. International patents are pending. The DebMed GMS is the world's first and only electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system that meets the WHO's "Save Lives: Clean Your Hands" recommendation.

"We see the granting of this patent as a significant milestone not just for DebMed, but for the entire healthcare quality and patient safety community," said Paul Alper, the lead inventor of the DebMed GMS technology and Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, DebMed. "DebMed will continue to focus on the creation of innovation solutions that further empower healthcare professionals to improve their hand hygiene behavior, enhancing patient safety and reducing the 1.7 million healthcare-associated infections that currently occur every year in the US." 

The patent, applied for in June 2010 and granted on April 13, 2013, covers several core technologies that provide a reliable system for collecting dispenser usage data (how many times healthcare workers within a specific unit actually washed and/or sanitized their hands). The system also uses an evidence-based algorithm to pre-determine the expected number of times they should have washed and/or sanitized their hands (hand hygiene opportunities), thus enabling the calculation of a compliance rate for that specific unit in real-time by dividing the actual hand hygiene events (or the numerator) by the expected number of opportunities for hand hygiene (the denominator).

"The DebMed GMS provides a significant advancement over traditional hand hygiene compliance monitoring methods such as direct observation and self-reporting that have been proven in study after study to be inaccurate and unreliable," said Alper. "Now, healthcare facilities have a choice – to continue with antiquated and unreliable methods or become pioneers; real leaders of change, by adopting a truly innovative, reliable and proven effective electronic solution - the DebMed GMS."

About DebMed®
DebMed is the healthcare program of the Deb Group. The DebMed program offers innovative hand hygiene products, electronic monitoring technology, and improvement tools to support hand hygiene compliance. The DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System) is the world's first group monitoring system to report hand hygiene compliance rates in real-time based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" and to date has recorded more than 27 million hand hygiene events. The electronic monitoring system is being utilized in a four year, multi-site research project being conducted by the Columbia University School of Nursing and funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). It is the first study aimed at reducing healthcare-associated infections in pediatric long-term care facilities by improving staff compliance with hand hygiene guidelines. For more information on the study or DebMed, visit www.debmed.com.

About Deb Group
Possessing international scale and strong local market presence, Deb Group provides innovative skin care programs for all types of workplace and public environments, spanning industrial, commercial, healthcare and food sectors. Headquartered in the United Kingdom with US operations based in Charlotte, NC, Deb Group is comprised of 21 companies operating in 16 countries. For more information, visit www.debgroup.com.

SOURCE DebMed