IBM tackles MRSA and other healthcare infections with RFID-enforced hand washing tech

It’s crazy, but one of the most dangerous things you can do is visit the hospital. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that nearly two million hospital patients contract a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) every year, and 90,000 of those HAIs result in death. These infections — superbugs such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) — are caused by bacteria being transferred from patient to patient, usually via a doctor or nurse. Hand washing is by far the simplest solution to these 90,000 unnecessary deaths, but getting healthcare professionals to reliably wash their hands has proven to be difficult. This is where IBM and its low-power mote technology (LMT) comes in.