Measuring the effectiveness of hospital-acquired infection prevention

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2010;160(Pt 1):764-8.

Abstract

This article deals with data on nosocomial infections acquired in the Geneva University Hospitals. Goal of the work is to derive a model from a hospital-acquired infection (HAI) prevalence survey of year Y and apply them to a prevalence survey of years Y+1, Y+2. This analysis permits to evaluate the effectiveness of preventive measures taken after the prevalence survey in year Y. It also analyzes the robustness of the SVM algorithm on time-variable attributes. The model build on the dataset of year Y gives better results than in a previous study. The application of the model on the Y+1 and Y+2 prevalence surveys shows simultaneously improvements and deteriorations of 5 performance measures. This highlights the effectiveness of prevention and reduces the risk of HAI after the prevalence survey of year Y. We introduce a new method to detect redundancy in a dataset with the SVM algorithm.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Cross Infection / epidemiology*
  • Cross Infection / prevention & control*
  • Disease Notification / methods*
  • Disease Notification / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Incidence
  • Proportional Hazards Models
  • Risk Assessment / methods
  • Risk Factors
  • Sentinel Surveillance*
  • Switzerland / epidemiology