INFORM | THIRD QUARTER OF 2021

THE FIGHT AGAINST HOSPITAL GERMS: HARTMANN TAKES NEXT STEPS IN DIGITAL INFECTION PREVENTION Editor: Mr. Haeni, the World Health Organization reports four million hospital-acquired infections in Europe per year. That’s seven per- cent of all patients. 80,000 of them die. How can Mission: Infection Prevention help? Thomas Haeni: With M: IP ® , we are pursuing two main goals. First, we are raising awareness of the issue at healthcare facilities and providing educational opportunities. Second, we are devel- oping resource-efficient and outcome-based solutions to improve the quality and safety of employees’ work and patients’ hospital stays. Editor: In September, HARTMANN published its first M: IP ® Index, which reports on the status of infection prevention in German hospitals. The study was based on surveys of commercial and medical directors in hospitals, as well as hygiene and nursing managers. Do the people in charge know about the high risk? Thomas Haeni: Yes. It is a high-priority issue for them. More than 75% of the respondents say that nosocomial infections currently are and will remain one of the major risk factors for hospitals in Germany, even threatening their existence. The majority of hos- pitals also state that defined processes exist for infection Since the beginning of the “Mission: Infection Prevention” (M: IP®) initiative in the fall of 2020, HARTMANN has been taking a completely new approach to the fight against nosocomial infections that occur in the course of a medical procedure at hospitals and nursing homes. The initiative supports healthcare facilities in reducing the number of infections as well as lowering the resulting costs. HARTMANN has also published its first M: IP® Index to provide a yearly update on infection prevention in German hospitals. We spoke with Thomas Haeni, Head of the M: IP® initiative, about the contents of the index, the importance of digitalization for infection prevention, and the development of a new software solution to support the fight against hospital-acquired infections. In conversation with Thomas Haeni, Head of the initiative M: IP ®