Proventix

nGage, a point of care compliance monitoring and communications device infrastructure, improves hand hygiene compliance and reduces the human and economic losses associated with illness.

Proventix’s™ goal is to provide a system that allows hand hygiene events to be monitored 100 percent of the time for both healthcare workers and visitors to a healthcare facility without disrupting workflow. In addition, the system compels behavioral change at the point of behavior and creates opportunities for increased efficiencies. The Centers for Disease Control, the Joint Commission, and other healthcare-related organizations recognize the need for a powerful tool not only to improve hand hygiene, but also to research the varied and complex relationship between hand hygiene and healthcare-associated infections. Proventix intentionally aligns products and services to meet this need for a new science of healthcare quality measurement and improvement.

Our lead product, nGage, is a point of care compliance monitoring system that motivates workers to seek out hand hygiene opportunities. The person, while engaged in washing their hands, is rewarded with important professional, performance and user-defined content through an active communication display unit. The dispenser is a “smart, touch-less” hand hygiene monitoring system that has the ability to measure events for both healthcare workers and visitors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Proventix’s nGage system is built around the idea that data-driven technology infrastructure is only as good as the quality and usability of the information gathered and the workers’ desire to interact with it. While the scene behind encouraging behavior modification is complex, Proventix’s goal is simple: healthcare workers should want to wash their hands, do it, and encourage others to do the same. We give the ability to not only have data to manage behaviors, but also have tools to reward good behavior. These processes are possible through the communications structure nGage offers.

How nGage Works

Individual healthcare workers wear smart radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. These tags are recognized through a secure, wireless network as the worker enters a patient area. The active communication display unit monitors hand hygiene compliance and reports this information to a central server. Compliance data can then be used as the framework for improvement. Automated monitoring of all hand hygiene events allows the healthcare facility to collect data to know details such as which workers comply, how often compliance happens and which dispensers are used. This information can then be used to determine correlations between hand hygiene events and healthcare-associated infections. It allows the healthcare facility to help reduce the spread of infections through compliant hand hygiene events, thus lowering costs associated with infections. And it does so without disruption to workflow.

General Information

Healthcare facilities can customize messages to their workers.

Patient Information

nGage includes an electronic monitoring record in the background that works as a health maintenance system. It can look at and respond with two types of information: predictive and preventative. Predictive information is time-based, giving details related to the specific disease state of the patient. Preventative information is event-based. Because the nGage system is integrated with the healthcare facility's information system, vital signs that are entered into the facility's system are recognized and communicated to the screen at the hand hygiene station. CDC guidelines say that a healthcare worker will engage in a hand hygiene event before patient contact. At that compliance event, information critical to the patient's care can override any other communication. It can include data such as the patient's vital signs and how those signs are different from their norm.

Items of Interest to the Worker

Healthcare workers can select information to receive at their quality hand hygiene compliance events. This can include any personally relevant information such as world and local news, stock reports, updates from a favorite Web site, or professional updates.