Hygiena International has won a tender to supply all the Scottish NHS Boards with a monitoring system in the fight against healthcare associated infections (HAI).
The Hygiena Systemsure Plus ATP monitoring system is now being introduced throughout the Scottish NHS from board level.
Domestic and hotel services will use the Systemsure Plus ATP monitoring systems as a training tool and to check the cleanliness of patient areas within the hospitals.
The hand-held, lightweight Hygiena instruments can provide a numerical result in seconds to show how clean or dirty a surface is.
This enables the boards to monitor the cleaning effectiveness of both the hospital environment and of the many types of patient equipment in use.
The Hygiena Systemsure Plus was selected from other ATP systems following thorough trials carried out in Scotland.
ATP Hygiene monitoring technology is now becoming more wide spread throughout the healthcare sector.
Visual assessment of cleaning is subjective and can be unreliable.
Systemsure supports existing quality audits and training programmes by providing objective measurements and hard evidence that cleaning has been effective.
The monitor, which has widespread applications throughout the healthcare sector to monitor patient areas, can be used as a training tool in hand washing, as a troubleshooting aid following outbreaks of infection and also as a routine check in other areas such as sterile and catering services departments.
The system comes with data management software that trends standards and assesses areas of concern.
Many hospitals have now determined a regular routine of hygiene inspections using the Hygiena Systemsure Plus.
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust set up routine monitoring in May 2007 and every clinical in-patient area has regular swabbing undertaken.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a common biochemical found in living organisms and biological tissues and can be positively detected by the Systemsure instrument.
Where the presence of ATP is indicated on a cleaned surface it means that cleaning has been ineffective, leaving a potentially hazardous surface for the growth and spread of germs.
A swab is taken of any pre-cleaned surface and then inserted into the hand-held instrument, with results indicated as a simple 'pass', 'caution' or 'fail'.
'The ATP monitor provides immediate feedback on the efficiency of cleaning,' said Rachel Scott, business development manager for Hygiena International.
'It detects the invisible contamination that potentially carries infectious agents and will assist NHS Scotland in its ongoing fight against infection,' she added.
The Hygiena Systemsure Plus, combined with the company's Ultrasnap and Aquasnap sampling devices, have been adopted for hygiene monitoring in the medical, healthcare, food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and water treatment markets.
The instrument utilises stable photodiode technology, showing in excess of 50 per cent savings compared to competitors equipment, according to the company.
As well as the LCD display and simple keypad operation, storage capacity is provided for 250 sample locations, 20 sampling plans and up to 50 named system users.
Easy data download to PC with user-friendly report writing for trend analysis means the system is both easy to use and virtually maintenance free.
