Germs and bacteria have evolved over centuries and have developed a variety of ingenious methods of spreading from Point A to Point B. One of the most pervasive, though—and arguably one of the easiest to address—is simply contact, most often through our hands. GOJO Industries—the makers of Purell hand sanitizer—hope to influence and improve hand hygiene in hospitals with the help of IoT and Microsoft Azure.
We’ve all seen the signs in public bathrooms suggesting you wash your hands—and mandating that employees do so. I mean, it seems like a reasonable thing to expect of someone before they return to the kitchen to prepare my dinner. The CDC claims that handwashing reduces incidents of common ailments by nearly 60 percent in some cases.
The issue of hand hygiene is arguably even more crucial in a hospital—and not just when using the bathroom. Patients in the hospital may suffer from or carry a wide range of germs and bacteria. A 2011 study from the CDC identified more than 720,000 cases of infections being spread in hospitals, contributing to the death of 75,000 patients that year from highly-preventable infections. It’s imperative to minimize the spread of those contaminants from room to room or person to person, so good hand hygiene is critical.
In 2015, GOJO set out to determine—with some help from Microsoft technology—whether sensor technology and IoT could play a role in improving hand sanitization in hospitals.
The Internet-of-Hand-Sanitizer-Dispensers
If you roam the halls of a hospital today, there’s a good chance you will find hand sanitizer dispensers mounted on the wall throughout the facility. By making the hand sanitizer easily and readily available, hopefully more people will use it more often and help the hospital contain the potential spread of infection. The question, however, is whether or not the dispensers are being actively used and if there is anything that can be done to increase compliance with basic hand hygiene.
GOJO launched PURELL SMARTLINK in 2012. The technology is a more advanced, connected version of the traditional hand sanitizer dispenser that enables a secure connection for remote communication and monitoring. The device on the wall that squirts out a blast of hand sanitizer had become part of the emerging world of IoT (internet-of-things).
I spoke with Jason Slater, Technology Solution Architect or the PURELL SMARTLINK technology, about the benefits of having hand sanitizer dispensers connected to the network. He explained that—even at a basic functionality level—the PURELL SMARTLINK technology gave hospitals the ability to remotely and centrally monitor devices to identify when they needed to be refilled, as well as a means of proactively identifying devices in need of maintenance. Those two simple things alone help to ensure the dispensers are operational and that hand sanitizer is available—which is essential.
Taking Things to the Next Level with Microsoft Azure
Basic monitoring of device functionality is great, but it doesn’t really help answer the question of whether or not they’re being used effectively. At a macro level, you would at least be able to identify which dispensers run out of hand sanitizer the quickest, or most often, and infer that people in that area seem to be more conscious of hand hygiene.
That isn’t very scientific or specific, though. The PURELL SMARTLINK technology, combined with Microsoft Azure IoT opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for how the technology can help influence hygiene and improve health in general in the hospital.
Vanessa Ho explains in a Microsoft blog post, “Traditionally, human observers tracked hygiene compliance in health organizations by watching if you washed your hands when you were supposed to. PURELL SMARTLINK Technology, a set of technology solutions from GOJO, streamlines that process with motion sensors, internet-connected dispensers and a cloud platform that collects and analyzes data.”
Best practice guidance suggests that medical professionals clean their hands before and after seeing a patient. Infrared sensors on the dispensers allow the system to detect these hand-cleaning “opportunities” and gather relevant data.
According to Ho, “All the data funnels into an easy-to-use analytics portal, a helpful tool powered by the Microsoft Azure IoT platform for health care facilities that monitor thousands of dispensers and millions of “opportunities” a month.”
A recent innovation for the system will even allow the hand sanitizer dispensers to communicate with employee badges via Bluetooth to monitor the hand cleaning behavior of specific job roles or individuals. That information can be used to intervene and provide additional coaching or guidance to improve hygiene.
Ho also quotes Jason Slater, “Being able to quantify behaviors helps you understand your baseline for implementing interventions. At the end of the day, it comes down to trying to reduce the spread of disease through hands that aren’t clean.”
Keeping it Secure
On a related note, GOJO is also leveraging Azure Sphere to provide end-to-end IoT security for the connected dispensers. You wouldn’t think that there is a huge risk of cyber attack via hand sanitizer dispenser, but that is no longer true. IoT has shifted the threat landscape and significantly increased the available attack surface. If it has an IP address and you can communicate with it over a network, it can also be hacked and compromised.
Slater and I talked about the rise of IoT security threats and strange scenarios like the recent attack that involved hijacking an internet-connected thermometer in an aquarium in a casino lobby to gain access to the network it was connected to. IoT has variety of benefits, but it also exposes you to increased risk.
“We work hand-in-hand with hospital IT staff and take a defense-in-depth approach,” says Slater. “We use best practices for security up and down our stack. Azure Sphere will allow us to really button up that last leg of our stack – hardware – to ensure we have the best protection against any potential security risks.”
