Ekahau Develops Solution for Monitoring Hand Hygiene

RESTON, Virginia, February 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Ekahau RTLS and GOJO Dispensers Combine to Ensure Hospital Employees Comply with Handwashing Requirements to Minimize Hospital Acquired Infections and Other Transmittable Diseases

Ekahau Inc., the worldwide leader in high performance Wi-Fi-based Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), today announced that it is, introducing a Wi-Fi Hand Hygiene Monitoring solution ( http://www.ekahau.com/solutions/healthcare/infection-control ) that automatically monitors hand hygiene of employees in the healthcare facilities to prevent the spread of hospital acquired infections and other transmittable diseases.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090513/347052 )

Ekahau RTLS offers the unique ability to track the location and staff interactions with patients and to measure hand hygiene activity down to the individual caregiver. Because the Ekahau RTLS runs over a hospital's existing Wi-Fi network, the hand hygiene solution is cost effective and easy to deploy. Utilizing the GOJO SmartLink(TM) Series Dispensers with the Ekahau RTLS, customers will have access to a complete skin care portfolio - including PURELL(R) hand sanitizer, PROVON(R) hand soaps and PURELL(R) Surgical Scrub - enabling them to monitor hand hygiene across the entire facility. Once in place, the same Ekahau RTLS system can be used for a variety of other applications, such as staff communications, safety, workflow, patient tracking, asset tracking and environmental monitoring.

The hand hygiene solution combines Ekahau location-enabled staff badges and Ekahau beacons that are embedded into GOJO's SmartLink(TM) Series Dispensers located throughout a hospital. The staff badges - which also are commonly used for staff messaging, workflow and safety applications - enable the RTLS system to automatically monitor staff-patient interactions, as well as when the staff member washes his or her hands before and after interacting with a patient in order to calculate compliance based on hospital policy. By leveraging the two-way communications capabilities of the Ekahau RTLS system, ( http://www.ekahau.com/products/real-time-location-system/overview ) staff members can receive reminders and status information on the text display of their badges to help improve hand hygiene compliance. To ensure full compliance, the Ekahau transmitters that are integrated into the dispensers will only be activated when hands are sanitized, eliminating any false information from being collected.

"Hand hygiene is a significant concern, particularly in the healthcare market where, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital acquired infections add more than $30 billion to annual healthcare costs and result in almost 100,000 deaths," said Tuomo Rutanen, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development at Ekahau. "We believe that Ekahau's real-time location tracking technology - which is already in use at more than 300 hospitals worldwide and works over the customer's existing Wi-Fi networks - has been integrated with GOJO hand sanitizing units to provide hospitals a way to ensure staff is compliant with hand washing procedures."

"Today, most healthcare institutions still go through a manual observation method to collect and report hand hygiene compliance rates. This manual observation method typically requires significant cost and effort, but rarely yields timely and accurate information on hand hygiene compliance," said Dave Mackay, Healthcare vice president at GOJO Industries. "When you consider the potential for Ekahau's real-time location tracking technology, enabled by GOJO's touch-free dispensing systems, to deliver real-time hand hygiene monitoring at an individual care level, it's exciting to think about the difference this could make for infection control."

The solution relies on Ekahau's experience in deploying healthcare technology enterprisewide and its accurate location tracking capabilities, as well as GOJO's extensive expertise in infection control in the healthcare environment. The solution is currently undergoing field testing and will be available in the second quarter of 2011.

More information about how this solution works is online at http://www.ekahau.com/solutions/healthcare/infection-control

Ekahau will be demonstrating a prototype of this solution at Booth 3701 during HIMSS11 Annual Conference & Exhibition, February 20-24, 2011, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.

About Ekahau Inc.

Ekahau Inc. is the industry leader in providing Wi-Fi-based RTLS solutions. Ekahau's customers, including several Fortune 500 companies worldwide, are realizing the benefits of Wi-Fi based location services and innovative Wi-Fi network planning and optimization tools. Ekahau's solutions are being used in more than 300 hospitals around the world, as well as by manufacturing, retail and industrial companies, government agencies and the military. Ekahau partners include wireless software developers, leading system integrators and international OEM partners, who develop and market wireless enterprise applications. Ekahau is a U.S.-based corporation, with headquarters in Reston, Va., and other offices in Saratoga, Calif.; Helsinki, Finland; Tokyo; and Hong Kong. For more information about Ekahau, please visit http://www.ekahau.com.

(c) Copyright 2011, Ekahau, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About GOJO Industries

GOJO invented PURELL Instant Hand Sanitizer and markets a full range of PURELL products to consumers and professionals worldwide. In addition, GOJO markets a full line of handwashing and skin care products to professionals under the GOJO(R) and PROVON(R) brand names. GOJO has a 64-year history of leadership in improving well-being through hand hygiene and healthy skin. GOJO products and programs kill germs on hands and solve skin care-related problems in a variety of markets, including healthcare, foodservice, food processing, manufacturing, automotive, education, government and military. GOJO is a privately-held corporation headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with offices in the United Kingdom, France, Australasia, Japan and Brazil. For more information, visit http://www.gojo.com.

PURELL(R) is a trademark of GOJO Industries, Inc. and is used with permission.