Software salve on hospital infections

An indigenously developed automated surveillance system has helped AIIMS Trauma Centre in cutting down hospital-acquired infections by 50%.

An indigenously developed automated surveillance system has helped AIIMS Trauma Centre in cutting down hospital-acquired infections by 50%.

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The software, developed by in-house scientists and installed by the hospital last year, identifies, tracks and calculates all device-associated infections with accuracy. The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) funded the project.

“We collect all the patient data — from the time he walks in, till the day he walks out —manually. Besides his injury details, we also collect data of the devices he used while in hospital such as catheter, ventilator, his infections and antibiotics administered — all on a day-to-day basis,” said Dr Purva Mathur, primary researcher for the project.

"Using the installed software, we study the trends. The software helps us to identify the infections and track them. We then work to help correct the cause of infection," she said.

“This kind of device was need of the hour. The computerized database is also helping us track antibiotic usage. We are closely monitoring individual use of drugs to check abuse, misuse and overuse of drugs,” said Dr MC Misra, chief, Jai Prakash Narayan AIIMS Trauma Centre.

“Antibiotic use has come down marginally but it still needs to come down a lot more. With mindless abuse of antibiotics, there was a growing resistance to them. If the trend continues, there will be an acute scarcity of effective anti-microbials,” he said.

After successfully tracing the infections, the hospital is now working on reducing it. “We are educating our clinicians in basic hand hygiene techniques and other simple methods formulated by the Centre for Disease Control (USA) to handle hospital devices. It has shown immense promise,” said Dr Mathur. After the research term is completed, the scientists would want to share the software with other hospitals to check infections.