Hospital acquired infections are a serious threat to the health andwell-being of patients and medical staff within clinical units. Many of theseinfections arise as a consequence of medical personnel that come into contactwith contaminated persons, surfaces or equipment and then with patients,without following proper hygiene procedures. In this paper we present ourongoing efforts in the development of a wireless sensor network basedcyber-physical system which aims to prevent hospital infections by increasingcompliance to established hygiene guidelines. The solution, currently developedunder European Union funding integrates a network of sensors for monitoringclinical workflows and ambient conditions, a workflow engine that executesencoded workflow instances and monitoring software that provides real-timeinformation in case of infection risk detection. As a motivating example, weemploy the workflow in the general practitioner's office in order tocomprehensively present types of sensors and their positioning in the monitoredlocation. Using the information collected by deployed sensors, the system iscapable of immediately detecting infection risks and taking action to preventthe spread of infections.
展开▼