Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 16 March 2018 to Question 132264 on Antibiotics: Drug Resistance, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of including (a) the latest electronic technology to reduce hospital infections and (b) other best practice on hand hygiene compliance in the prevention strand of the new antimicrobial resistance strategy.

Infection prevention and control will remain a key pillar of the United Kingdom’s upcoming five-year national action plan on antimicrobial resistance.

NHS Improvement, who lead on infection prevention and control, has included a hand hygiene monitoring and compliance workstream in its current work programme.

NHS Improvement has undertaken a rapid review of evidence on the use of electronic monitoring devices across the National Health Service to determine hand hygiene compliance. The technology used in some trusts is currently reliant on local data infrastructure and many existing systems would not be able to support it.