Intelligent and resource-efficient monitoring systems of disinfection and cleaning process quality along the value chain in the healthcare sector (ImproClean)
Smart hygiene and cleaning monitoring: another step towards the digitalization of healthcare
The digital transformation of healthcare is one of the greatest scientific tasks of the 21st century. The challenges in healthcare have been steadily increasing worldwide for years. Costs are exploding and patient care is declining in quality. The devastating global impact of the CORONA pandemic alone highlights how vulnerable healthcare value chains are to infection outbreaks, with no traceability of cleaning and hygiene failures. Therefore, the consortium of the “ImproClean” project – namely Gebrüder Heyl Vertriebsgesellschaft für innovative Wasseraufbereitung mbH, GERA-IDENT GmbH, STATCON GmbH and Hohenstein Institut für Textilinnovation gGmbH – has set itself the goal of developing an effective, smart and digital monitoring of hygiene and cleaning processes. The project started on 01.02.23 and the project duration is two years. The project is funded by ZIM and BMWK.
With such innovative quality assurance concepts in cleaning and hygiene, one can effectively counter such problems as the shortage of skilled workers, pandemic control and nosocomial infections. Because currently, many important quality and hygiene data are hardly recorded. Thus, companies and research institutions with optimally coordinated expertise have come together to build an innovative technological state-of-the-art platform for intelligent monitoring of cleaning and hygiene measures along the value chain in healthcare. Here, the innovation consists of the following: (1) building sensor networks for monitoring media quality and (2) surface-related parameters, via multi-parameter RFID sensors with smart limit monitoring, (3) developing soft sensors for hygiene and cleaning performance, and (4) designing and developing AI-based cloud applications. With these innovation steps, an important building block should be set in order to be able to digitize cleaning and hygiene processes in healthcare but also beyond.
This project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) based on a resolution of the German Bundestag.
