Development of Intelligent Early Detection and Monitoring of Air- Borne Infection in British Hospitals

Hospitals are closely fitted buildings encompassing a wide range of specialized and highly serviced spaces which can be a reservoir for potentially infective agents which need to be controlled and managed effectively. They are highly digitised incorporating sophisticated monitoring and control systems. This paper assesses the rasion detre for developing sensors-based detection and monitoring system of air-borne infection (ABI) in British hospitals; it seeks to examine the effectiveness of incorporating such a system in selected critical hotspots of mechanical ventilation systems in hospital environment to increase resilience in tackling sporadic outbreaks. A Predictive Infection Criticality model (PICM) for assessing the risk was developed, solely based on the overall risk weighting of four key environmental parameters including air temperature, Relative Humidity (RH), air velocity and dust accumulation. The main findings is that effective incorporation of an intelligent monitoring may contribute in mitigating such endemic problem.