Masimo announced the limited market release of Visual Clinical Activity Monitoring, a video analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to help facilitate compliance with hospital hand hygiene protocols. VCAM, which integrates seamlessly with the Masimo Hospital Automation™ platform of solutions, including Masimo Patient SafetyNet™, Replica®, and Root®, is designed to help hospitals and other care facilities optimize protocol adherence, with real-time notifications at the point-of-care about current hand hygiene status and powerful analytics around protocol compliance – with the ultimate goal of helping institutions decrease the incidence of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).
Hand hygiene is well known to be an important factor in infection control activities, with numerous studies showing that washing one’s hands is the “single most important, simplest, and least expensive means of reducing the prevalence of HAIs and the spread of antimicrobial resistance.”1 A recently published study conducted across multiple sites over eight years in Finland, for example, found a direct correlation between increased compliance with hand hygiene protocols and decreased incidence of HAIs.2 However, in the absence of “active” hand hygiene initiatives – programs, for example, designed to measure and automate compliance – the compliance rate with such protocols rarely exceeds 40% in hospitals and other healthcare institutions.1
Masimo VCAM, powered by Masimo’s expertise in AI-enabled algorithms and based on each facility’s standards, makes it easier for hospitals to optimize staff adherence to hand hygiene protocols by providing notifications on the spot, tracking compliance, and automating reporting. VCAM detects when clinicians are performing hygiene activities, such as washing hands or using an alcohol-based sanitizer, and identifies when they interact with people and objects, as well as when they touch or pick up an object from a potentially unclean surface such as the floor. Immediate notifications about current hygiene status are relayed to individual clinicians on bedside Root monitors and on Replica-equipped smartphones, prompting them, for example, to wash or sanitize their hands when they may have neglected to do so. In turn, VCAM’s rich reporting capabilities provide detailed analysis, such as the rates of clean vs. dirty incidents (which can be filtered by room and by department), helping leadership target opportunities for workflow improvements.
Vijay Dhar, MD, Chief of Neonatology at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), California, said, “We, at CHOC, are eagerly anticipating the deployment of Masimo VCAM, the innovative artificial intelligence (AI) system that can characterize hand hygiene compliance. We hope VCAM will be able to help us to decrease hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), including viral pathogens such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), bacterial organisms such as MRSA, and other nosocomial organisms responsible for central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI), the most common form of nosocomial infection affecting neonates. With Masimo VCAM helping us maintain hand hygiene, we aim to diminish these totally preventable HAIs and improve the safety and wellbeing of our neonates.”
Joe Kiani, Founder and CEO of Masimo, said, “VCAM adds an important new tool to the growing Masimo ecosystem of Hospital Automation products, building on our experience developing breakthrough algorithms and next-generation connectivity solutions, to help streamline hospitals’ ability to meet compliance goals with as fundamental and critical a task as hand-washing. VCAM aligns with our continued mission to improve patient outcomes, reduce the cost of care, and ultimately, improve life.”
