By Healthcare Facilities Today

CHARLOTTE, N.C.- DebMed, creator of the award-winning, world's first electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring system based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, announced today a significant enhancement to the DebMed® GMS (Group Monitoring System). The electronic hand hygiene monitoring system is now compatible with any soap or sanitizer dispenser. This change enables hospitals and other healthcare facilities that may have a preference for one hand hygiene product over another to convert to the most reliable method of electronic hand hygiene monitoring while still using the product of their choice.

The DebMed GMS electronically tracks whether or not healthcare workers are cleaning their hands as frequently as they should. It utilizes state-of-the-art electronics in the DebMed soap and alcohol-based sanitizer dispensers to capture hand cleaning activity on a group basis, as opposed to requiring employees to wear a badge and being tracked individually. It draws on an evidence-based, statistically valid algorithm, which determines how many times healthcare workers should have cleaned their hands, based on patient census and degree of patient care, to derive a compliance rate.  Now, DebMed has extended the system to allow the same functionality to be available with any commercial hand hygiene product dispenser.

Using the DebMed GMS with the DebMed line of skin care products provides the most complete and cost-effective hand hygiene solution; however, the latest enhancement acknowledges the market's need for a choice in skin care products.  This latest technology allows hospitals the option to retain their current skin care products when implementing the DebMed electronic hand hygiene monitoring system.  The new monitoring device does not interfere with or affect the hospital's existing dispensers.

Whether used with DebMed soap and sanitizer dispensers or a hospital's existing dispensers, the DebMed GMS is quickly and easily deployed with minimum IT involvement, and provides robust reporting on healthcare worker hand hygiene activity, as well as on online toolkit of educational materials to drive behavior change. Electronic monitoring is proven to be a more reliable and effective way to monitor hand hygiene than the traditional and most commonly used method which is manual, direct observation.

"DebMed is committed to providing market-leading hand hygiene solutions in order to help decrease the number of healthcare-associated infections. Our most recent offering, which expands the system to work with any soap or sanitizer dispenser, was based on listening to feedback from the clinicians and healthcare professionals who most frequently use the dispensers. To stay at the forefront of hand hygiene innovation, we will continue to balance leading-edge technology and customer need," said Heather McLarney, vice president of marketing for DebMed.

The DebMed program combines a full-line of world-class skin care products developed specifically for healthcare environments, with the DebMed GMS electronic hand hygiene monitoring system which provides hospitals with a more cost-effective, efficient and accurate way to track hand hygiene compliance than today's manual methods.  The DebMed GMS is the only monitoring system with the ability to monitor hand hygiene compliance at the critical point-of-care with specialized away from the wall soap and sanitizer dispensers, creating the most comprehensive solution to improve hand hygiene compliance available on the market. The DebMed GMS won the Frost & Sullivan Hand Hygiene Solutions New Product Innovation Award in 2013.

About DebMed

DebMed is the healthcare program of the Deb Group. The DebMed program offers innovative hand hygiene products, electronic monitoring technology, and improvement tools to support hand hygiene compliance.  The DebMed® GMS™ (Group Monitoring System), winner of the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Hand Hygiene Solutions New Product Innovation Award, is the world's first group monitoring system to report hand hygiene compliance rates based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Five Moments for Hand Hygiene" and to date has recorded more than 35 million hand hygiene events.  The system is being utilized in a four year, multi-site research project being conducted by the Columbia University School of Nursing and funded by a $1.2 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). For more information, visit www.debmed.com.

About Deb Group

Possessing international scale and strong local market presence, Deb Group provides innovative skin care programs for all types of workplace and public environments, spanning industrial, commercial, healthcare and food sectors.  Headquartered in the United Kingdom with US operations based in Charlotte, NC, Deb Group is comprised of 22 companies operating in 18 countries.  For more information, visit www.debgroup.com.