Miami Children’s Hospital Installs HyGreen Hand Hygiene System
Miami, September 8, 2010 — Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) announced that it has installed Xhale Innovations’ (XI) HyGreen® Hand Hygiene System in the MCH Oncology Unit. This will be the nation’s first installation of HyGreen in a children’s hospital and the first in South Florida.
To enhance patient safety, Miami Children’s Hospital chose to integrate HyGreen within its Oncology Unit’s infection control program with the potential to expand HyGreen into other areas of the hospital soon. The HyGreen system reminds healthcare workers to wash their hands. After cleaning their hands with alcohol-containing soaps and gels, healthcare workers place them under the HyGreen sensor that sends a wireless “all clean” message to a badge worn by the healthcare worker. A wireless monitor above the patient bed searches for the message. If it’s absent, the badge vibrates, reminding the healthcare worker to wash. All interactions are recorded in a database in real-time.
“Miami Children’s Hospital honors the trust our families place in us. This heightens our commitment to provide the safest and most innovative, standardized service for the children in our care. As the first children’s hospital to implement the HyGreen technology, MCH leads the way in the prevention of common hospital-associated infection,” said Deise Granado-Villar, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer, Senior Vice President Medical Affairs.
In other hand-hygiene leadership, MCH won an award from the Florida Hospital Association in 2009 for its Squeaky Clean hand hygiene awareness project aimed at caregivers and patient families. In addition, Miami Children’s Hospital is the first pediatric hospital to participate in the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare Hand Hygiene Project.
The HyGreen system was designed to reflect the recommended hand hygiene guidelines from leading industry experts, including the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Joint Commission.
“As a leader in patient safety, Miami Children’s Hospital installed HyGreen to enhance efforts to protect patients from hospital-associated infections,” states XI CEO, Richard Allen. “This not only underscores MCH’s dedication to quality patient care, but also its reputation as an early adopter when it comes to breakthrough technology.”
To support the initiative to bring HyGreen throughout the hospital and implement other innovations, members of the community can donate to Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation at www.mchf.org or 305-666-2889.
Founded in 1950 by Variety Clubs International, Miami Children’s Hospital® is South Florida’s only licensed specialty hospital exclusively for children, with more than 650 attending physicians and over 130 pediatric subspecialists. The 289-bed hospital is renowned for excellence in all aspects of pediatric medicine with several specialty programs ranked among the best in the nation in 2008, 2009 and 2010 by U.S. News & World Report. The hospital is also home to the largest pediatric teaching program in the southeastern United States and has been designated an American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet facility, the nursing profession’s most prestigious institutional honor.
Xhale Innovations, Inc. (XI) designs systems that help increase patient safety through technology. XI is a subsidiary of Xhale, Inc. which was formed in 2005 following six years of research and intellectual property development at the University of Florida, Gainesville. The company’s corporate operations are headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, near the University of Florida campus, and the company’s production and engineering facilities are located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. XI’s HyGreen system has won the both the 2009 Popular Science Best of What’s New Award and the 2010 Medical Design Excellence Award. For more information, visit the XI HyGreen website at www.gohygreen.com.