A Process for Assessing Products for Infection Prevention in Health Care Settings: A Framework From the Healthcare...

Infection control is a complex task that spans people, products, and practices in diverse settings. For years, the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) has provided advice and guidance to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how best to prevent infections. These recommendations have focused largely on health care delivery practices and occasionally on general categories of products. With an influx of novel infection control products and growing use of these products by frontline clinicians, an efficient process for developing transparent, rigorous product recommendations that includes myriad data sources was necessary. To address this gap, the CDC asked HICPAC to develop a process that would help inform committees considering product-related recommendations. This article describes the process to develop this approach and provides an outline of how the tool may be used when products with infection control claims are recommended in guidelines or recommendations for infection prevention.