The doctor who championed hand-washing and briefly saved lives

This is the story of a man whose ideas could have saved a lot of lives and spared countless numbers of women and newborns’ feverish and agonizing deaths. You’ll notice I said “could have.” The year was 1846, and our would-be hero was a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis was a man of his time, according to Justin Lessler, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Continue reading →

New study finds hospital patients are not washing their hands

Health technology company Infonaut, a MaRS client, has released a study showing that hospital patients may be at significant risk of infection due to their own poor hand hygiene. The findings were measured in a Toronto hospital using Infonaut’s Hospital Watch Live™ system, innovative technology designed to assist hospitals in monitoring and controlling the spread of infections by analyzing the movement and behavior of hospital staff, patients and equipment. Continue reading →