Leveraging indoor positioning systems for infectious disease control

Infection control is important in inpatient care settings to deliver high quality of care. Real-time location systems can offer a more detailed view than ever of transmission dynamics of infections in these settings.As the performance of these systems has been steadily increasing over the past couple of years, the cost has been decreasing, and they have been successfully deployed in other settings such as the logistic sector, we notice an increased interest in deploying these systems in healthcare settings. The goal of this project is to demonstrate the usefulness of real-time location systems for infection control and prevention by deploying these systems in inpatient care settings (elderly care facilities and hospitals). We valorise the developed software algorithms that use the data generated by these systems to generate rankings of people who have the highest odds of being infected, and who should be prioritized for testing and follow-up.

Keywords:real-time location systems, infection control, inpatient care, proximity sensors, digital health

Disciplines:Infectious diseases