The Impact of Electronic Monitoring on Healthcare Associated Infections: The Role of the HViTAL Platform

Introduction: In Portugal, 9.8% of patients admitted were inflicted with healthcare associated infections, corresponding to a prevalence of 11.7%. The Hospital de Sao Joao has developed a business intelligence platform able to supervise (the patients), monitor (the clinical condition) and notify (the healthcare personnel): HViTAL. This study aims to assess the impact of electronic monitoring on healthcare associated infections since the year of HViTAL implementation. Material and Methods: We evaluated data since January 2008 (moment from which computerized records exist) until December 2011, comparing them with subsequent data, those corresponding to January 2012 (implementation date of HViTAL) until 19 October 2015. Results: There was an upward trend of infection parameters in the 2008 - 2011 period. Since January 2012 and October 2015, all parameters of the infection indicator showed a negative linear trend. Discussion: The results are very suggestive that the HVITAL may have had an impact on improving parameters associated to healthcare associated infections. Basic measures of infection control were highlighted since 2005, with an increasing number of health professional awareness campaigns, a fact which, although not analyzed in this report, may also have contributed to the observed improvement. Our study did not include other variables such as investment in human capital. Conclusion: There was a clear improvement in all areas characterizing the healthcare associated infections, with obvious positive impact with the introduction of HViTAL.