Improved Infection Prevention Measures for Increased Patient Safety to Be Addressed at American Organization of Nursing Executives Annual Meeting

CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- DebMed^®, the creator of the world's first and only electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" is exhibiting at the American Organization of Nursing Executives (AONE) annual meeting in Denver, March 20-23 (booth # 1527).

With patient safety at the forefront of concerns for nurses and chief nursing officers, DebMed is providing a solution to help decrease healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and enable healthcare facilities to achieve breakthrough levels of quality while reducing costs. Hospitals using the DebMed GMS and its supporting improvement tools have experienced increases in hand hygiene compliance, ultimately helping to decrease infections and therefore improving patient safety. The DebMed GMS uses an evidence-based, statistically valid algorithm to provide feedback on compliance rates in real-time based on the WHO's "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene", making it the only hand hygiene system to meet the WHO's "Save Lives: Clean Your Hands" recommendation.

HAIs 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 health-care 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.

"We know that nurses are on the front-lines of patient care and feel that we have created a system that they will embrace that transforms direct observation to a real-time, research-based technology that is more accurate, reliable and  helps improve patient safety in healthcare settings worldwide," said Heather McLarney, vice president of marketing for DebMed. "Moving to electronic hand hygiene monitoring is imperative in this day and age, and should be a priority for chief nursing officers whose ultimate goal is to keep patients safe."

Because electronic monitoring systems are impartial, unbiased and the only way to capture and report on 100 percent of hand hygiene events, not just the fraction of 1 percent recorded by human observation, they eliminate the human factor and, with it, the Hawthorne Effect. This phenomenon happens when people know they are being watched or observed -- they tend to be on their best behavior. Research has shown that this will lead to overstated and unreliable compliance data.

For more information on DebMed, visit www.debmed.com and AONE booth #1527.

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. Deb is the first hand hygiene company in the world to provide actionable information along with its hand hygiene products to help drive best practices and improved outcomes for patients worldwide.

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 U.S. 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