Lab Matters Fall 2023 | Page 31

INFORMATICS

By Paul Jankauskas , MS , MPA , manager , Informatics

Healthcare-associated infections ( HAI ) are a significant risk to patient safety , and the prevalence in hospital facilities is often unknown or under-characterized . Describing the burden of these infections is critical to decreasing risk and guiding infection prevention and control ( IPC ) initiatives in hospitals and other healthcare facilities . The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ’ s ( CDC ’ s ) Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion ( DHQP ) established the Global Action in Healthcare Network – HAI ( GAIHN-HAI ) module to detect , prevent and respond to HAIs in network facilities of four countries — Philippines , Indonesia , Brazil and Jordan . As part of this network , CDC is partnering with facilities to develop sustainable methods of measuring HAIs and using data for action in resourcelimited healthcare settings .

HAI Point Prevalence Surveys

An HAI point prevalence survey ( PPS ) is a less resource-burdensome epidemiological method to measure the prevalence of HAIs in healthcare settings and provide actionable IPC data . Data are collected by IPC personnel using a standardized protocol at a specific point in time to measure HAI rates among hospitalized patients during the survey period . CDC ’ s GAIHN-HAI team funded partners to implement HAI PPS at network hospitals in the four countries and wanted to provide an efficient and intuitive tool to collect and analyze the data . They envisioned a responsive system in which users are guided through the complex HAI PPS process by following a series of simple step-by-step instructions . APHL was funded to work in cooperation with CDC to identify or develop a minimum viable product ( MVP ) for this purpose .

Project Progression & Identification of Informatics Solution

The project proceeded in four steps : 1 . Discovery .

2 . Define data requirements and develop project solutions roadmap .

3 . Perform solutions landscape analysis and propose design and architecture .

4 . Development and deployment of the MVP .

The GAIHN-HAI . org Web Application in Action

Data collection requirements were documented and tested at hospitals in the Philippines and Jordan and the first iteration of development of the MVP was completed by Deloitte developers in June 2023 . The PWA development , test and production environments were deployed on the APHL Informatics Messaging Service ( AIMS ) platform and user acceptance testing was completed in July 2023 . The GAIHN-HAI . org application will go live and be available to GAIHN-HAI hospitals to facilitate HAI PPS data collection this fall . The actionable data will be readily accessible to the participating hospitals to direct IPC activities and improve patient safety in an impactful manner . g