CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- DebMed®, creator of the award-winning, world's first electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, will present its DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System) at The American Nurses Association (ANA) 2014 Quality Conference and the Association of California Nurse Leaders (ACNL) 36^th Annual Conference February 5-7^th and February 12^th, respectively.

"The nursing community plays an imperative role in infection awareness and prevention in hospitals, and these conferences enable us to talk one-on-one with nursing leaders to discuss the issue of hand hygiene and share with them the latest practices to protect nurses and their patients," said Heather McLarney, vice president of marketing, DebMed. "Nurses are on the front lines of patient care and we are committed to arming them with the best tools."

Healthcare organizations are challenged with maintaining consistently high levels of safety and quality. DebMed provides a solution to help decrease healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and enable healthcare facilities to achieve breakthrough levels of quality while reducing costs.

The DebMed GMS electronic group monitoring system automatically tracks staff hand hygiene activity based on the WHO Five Moments for Hand Hygiene guidelines accurately and reliably, and provides hospitals with timely and actionable hand hygiene compliance data to help organizations create and sustain quality and safety initiatives. Additionally, the DebMed GMS is more accurate and reliable than oft-used direct observation without being punitive, as it provides feedback at the unit level as a whole rather than singling out individuals.

"Electronic group monitoring systems are impartial, unbiased and report on 100 percent of hand hygiene events, not just the fraction of one percent recorded by human observation," continued McLarney. "Moving to electronic hand hygiene monitoring should be a priority for hospitals to keep their nurses and their patients safe."

HAIs, most commonly spread by hands, affect hundreds of millions of patients worldwide every year, leading to more serious illness, prolonged hospital stays, higher costs to patients and their families, additional financial burden on the healthcare system and, critically, often the tragic loss of life. At any time, more than 1.4 million patients worldwide are suffering from hospital acquired infections. In the U.S. alone, HAIs are responsible for an estimated two million infections and almost 100,000 deaths (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011) each year.

For more information on DebMed, visit www.debmed.com and DebMed's ANA booth #315, or ACNL booth #311.

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), winner of the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Hand Hygiene Solutions New Product Innovation Award, is the world's first group monitoring system to report hand hygiene compliance rates based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" and to date has recorded more than 35 million hand hygiene events.  The 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). For more information, 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 22 companies operating in 18 countries.  For more information, visit www.debgroup.com.

SOURCE DebMed