Three studies have been conducted at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland that have shown that Indigo-Clean reduces bacterial contamination levels in some settings beyond what standard cleaning and infection control methods can achieve.

HAIs can add $43,000 in costs to every patient that is affected, according to U.S. Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project data. These blue-violet LED light fixtures, may play a part in cutting those costs.


High interest in wearables and big data

Most people either have a Fitbit or Apple Watch or know someone who does. Wearables have taken the consumer market by storm, and anyone who has attended the HIMSS conference in recent years knows that businesses are eager to cross over into the medical market.

Kerry Riek, associate in the applied solutions group at ECRI, said in one of the workshops that ECRI is investigating whether the wireless wearable sensors are useful in a clinical setting like a hospital or in a patient's home.

The wearables come in many different forms — some can be worn as accessories and others are adhesive patches.

Some promising data has been recently published — a Stanford University Medical Center study found that a smartwatch device was able to accurately detect seven of eight seizures in patients with epilepsy and transmit the data to caregivers.

The University of California, San Francisco also evaluated the smartwatch among the pediatric population and found that it has 100 percent sensitivity in detecting tonic-clonic seizures and over 90 percent accuracy overall.

But oftentimes these wearables can be overwhelming to clinicians because of the wealth of data they collect. Riek recommended that clinicians choose a specific clinical need for the wearables, including heart failure or Parkinson's disease, and set target and quality measures to see if they are effective.

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