The primary objective of this study was to validate a novel method of assessing hand hygiene compliance using ultrasound transmitters in patient zones and staff tagged with receivers. The secondary objective was to assess the impact of audio reminders and quantified individual feedback.

An observational comparison against manual assessment followed by assessment using an open-label randomized control method.

Patient zones were established in 3 wards of 2 large teaching hospitals, including 88 general and 18 intensive care unit ward beds.

Consented regular ward nursing, medical, and allied health staff.

Concordance between 40 hours of manual observation using trained hand hygiene auditors and automated measures of opportunities and compliance. Subsequent measured interventions were reminder beeps and written individual feedback.

When compared with manual observations, ultrasound monitoring underestimated percentage compliances by a nonsignificant mean (95% confidence interval [CI]) difference of 5.2% (−20.1% to 9.8%; P = .491). After the intervention, adjusted multivariate analysis showed mean (95% CI) overall compliance in the intervention arm was 6.8% (2.5%−11.1%; P = .002) higher than in the control arm. Results stratified by compliance at entry and exit showed that the effect of intervention was stronger for compliance at exit than at entry.

Our automated measure of hand hygiene compliance is valid when compared with the traditional gold standard of manual observations. As an interventional tool, ultrasound-based automated hand hygiene audits have significant benefit that can be built upon with enhancements and find increasing acceptance with time.