Automated surveillance systems for health care associated infections: need of the hour

Abstract

Surveillance systems need to evolve with changes in health-care systems. [...]to effectively reduce HAIs, an active, real-time surveillance system is needed, which is reliable, time-efficient, based on standard definitions and which uses information obtained from existing hospital databases. [6] This has helped in stepping up the surveillance activities from sample to patient-oriented ones. Since detection of HAIs is entirely dependent on its definition, incorporation of standard definitions in automated systems has been found to be its most important advantage.