Monitoring direct and indirect transmission of infections in a healthcare facility using a real-time locating system

摘要

An infectious disease transmission tracking system (10) includes a real-time locating system (RTLS) (12) configured to track locations of tags (14, 15) in a monitored area. At least one electronic processor (22) is in operative communication with the RTLS to receive locations of tags in the monitored area. A non-transitory storage medium stores, a map (30) of the monitored area; a nodes database (32) storing information on nodes (18) in which each node is a person, a mobile object, or a map zone and the nodes database stores information on the nodes including at least (i) an identification of each node as a person, a mobile object, or a map zone, (ii) an identification of a tag associated with each node that is identified as a person or a mobile object, (iii) locational information on the map for each node that is identified as a map zone, and (iv) an infection likelihood for each node with respect to a tracked pathogen; and a pathogen database (34) storing infectious transmission information for at least the tracked pathogen including one or more transmission modes for the tracked pathogen and at least one node residency time for the tracked pathogen. The non-transitory storage medium includes instructions readable and executable by the at least one electronic processor to perform an infectious disease transmission tracking method (100) including: computing a pathway (35) on the map of at least one infected node using locations of the tag associated with the infected node received from the RTLS wherein an infected node has a non-zero infection likelihood respective to the tracked pathogen which satisfies an infected criterion; computing an infectious zone (36) on the map along the pathway using the infectious transmission information stored in the pathogen database; for each node contacting the infectious zone, adjusting the infection likelihood of the contacting node in the nodes database based on at least the infectious transmission information for the tracked pathogen and designating the contacting node as an infected node if the updated infection likelihood of the contacting node satisfies the infected criterion.