Evaluation and Advancement of the Hygienic Echo’s Buddy Badge Hand Hygiene System
December 11, 2024 (Toronto, Ontario) – Approximately 7% of patients admitted to hospital will acquire an infection that they did not have prior to admission. The frightening truth is that Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) contribute to 8,000 to 12,000 deaths each year in Canada and 16 million worldwide.
It is well known that frequent hand washing by staff is the most effective way of preventing the transmission of infections from patient to patient in hospital. To prevent HAIs, hospital staff who interact with patients or patient environments need to clean their hands typically over 100 times in a single shift. It is easy to imagine that busy healthcare workers might forget sometimes when under time pressures. The biggest challenge is how to kindly and positively engage and inspire hospital staff to consistently practice hand hygiene to reduce infection transmission.
Traditionally, the average hand hygiene performance is expressed as the number of times hand hygiene is performed divided by the number of times the rules state that it should be performed. Often the result is inflated because of a Hawthorne effect (a phenomenon that occurs when people change their behaviour because they are aware of being observed) when audits are done in person. The Hygienic Echo system counts many thousands of opportunities and provides an objective measurement. Hygienic Echo’s Buddy Badge system can consistently help hospital staff reach and maintain their hand hygiene at above an astonishing 90%, thereby reducing costs from extended hospital stays and saving lives.
The Buddy Badge system by Hygienic Echo helps caregivers achieve high levels of hand hygiene in a positive and appreciative way. The system comprises an intelligent badge that receives invisible light signals from beacons in the ceiling telling the badge its location and the applicable hand hygiene rules for that location. Soap and sanitizer dispensers also send light signals to the badge to indicate when hand hygiene is performed. The Buddy Badge automatically and discreetly reminds the wearer when the need for hand hygiene has been missed so that they can maintain a high performance and prevent spreading infections. To recognize and appreciate hospital staff for their great hand hygiene efforts, Buddy Badge system comes with the AI-based Hand Hygiene Hero Reward Program that acknowledges and rewards staff for outstanding hand hygiene achievements. The high level of adaptability of the Buddy Badge system and its positive encouragement approach helps hospital staff to consistently achieve and maintain their hand hygiene at above 90%.
Through the Life Sciences Critical Technologies and Commercialization (LSCTC) Centre of Excellence, OBIO® facilitated a partnership between Hygienic Echo and Unity Health Toronto to further develop the capabilities of the Buddy Badge system and to evaluate it in a specialized acute care environment. Dr. Matthew Muller is the Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Unity Health Toronto and leads this project on a specialized respiratory diseases unit at St Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health. The objectives include expanding the capability of Buddy Badge to predict an individual patient’s risk of infection by automatically merging clinical data with the Buddy Badge data using AI. The ability for the Buddy Badge to help optimize staff performance together with the ability to predict individual patient risk and recommend risk-reduction actions will make Buddy Badge the most advanced system of its type in the world.
“The opportunity to collaborate closely with this very specialized unit at St. Michael’s Hospital is amazing for our company. Staff are incredibly welcoming, kind and helpful. In the first 6 months we have already gathered data on over 63,000 occasions when hand hygiene was needed. Collaboration with Dr. Muller and the great researchers at St Michael’s will accelerate expansion of our AI capabilities” – Dr. Geoff Fernie, President & CEO, Hygienic Echo.
“The risk of infection is always high on our minds. Infections harm patients and prolong hospitalization. Buddy Badge is an exciting innovation with great potential to help our staff protect patients and prevent infections by reaching our goal of near perfect hand hygiene” – Dr. Matthew Muller, Director of Infection Prevention and Control, St. Michael’s Hospital.
“OBIO® is delighted to support this partnership to bring a critical technology like AI to a product for Ontario’s hospitals to tackle the huge burden of hospital-associated infections. We are pleased to support this evaluation of an Ontario-made product from Hygienic Echo in one of the largest Ontario health systems.” – Dr. Maura Campbell, President & CEO, OBIO®
About Hygienic Echo Inc
Hygienic Echo is a company that was launched to take a hand hygiene system that was invented at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute by Dr Geoff Fernie and his research team and make it available to other hospitals. The company is driven by a commitment to enhance infection prevention, elevate patient safety, and provide healthcare workers with the tools they need to maintain exceptional hand hygiene standards.
Dr Fernie’s research has focused on prevention of injury and illness throughout his career. Over the last 20 years he has become increasingly concerned about infections with 3 epidemics (SARS, H1N1 & Covid) and with the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. He led a team that developed an electronic hand hygiene system and with 3 colleagues formed a company to make it available widely. Hygienic Echo is based in Markham at ventureLAB. The company is now in its expansion phase with its first product that is an advanced electronic hand hygiene system for hospital and LTC use. Supported by local angel investors, Hygienic Echo is poised to bring more groundbreaking products to market to enhance patient safety and infection prevention worldwide. For more information, please visit www.hygienicecho.com.
About OBIO®
OBIO®, a not-for-profit, membership-based organization dedicated to advancing health technology innovation and commercialization, is prioritizing the evaluation and implementation of new solutions using critical technologies through its Life Sciences Critical Technologies & Commercialization (LSCTC) Centre of Excellence, supported by the Government of Ontario. OBIO® is engaged in strategy, programming, policy development and advocacy to address the needs of the next generation of companies developing innovative human health products. For more information, please visit obio.ca and follow OBIO® on LinkedIn and X.
Media contacts:
Catharine Hancharek
COO
Hygienic Echo Inc.
ch@hygienicecho.com
Doriane Rey
Senior Manager, Marketing & Communications
OBIO®
dorianerey@obio.ca