Generating Surveillance Data for Nosocomial Infections from Routine Charting in Intensive Care Units

The University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg (UKGM), Giessen, Germany participates in a country wide nosocomial infections surveillance project on intensive care units (ICU) called KISS. KISS data must be gathered daily and is comprised of detailed clinical data like patient movements, ward utilization, presence of central venous and urinary catheters and types of artificial respiration. This happens for all of the 10 ICU's at UKGM Giessen and proved to be very tedious and time consuming for the institute for hospital hygiene. The goal of this project was the automated generation of the KISS reports from routinely collected data in the patient data management system (PDMS). The results show that this is largely feasible without changing the documentation habits of physicians and nurses.