Back to the drawing board

Some concerns were brought up when talking with our instructors that having a bacteria detection system might not have a big impact since 1) we don't have data on UTIs in Nicaragua specifically and 2) the urinary catheter may be hidden under drapes such that the patient might not even know if the catheter is contaminated.

We're currently brainstorming other ways we can redirect the research and materials we have to a device that would have a greater impact on patients in Nicaragua through more awareness of contamination, accountability on the staff's part, and better practices in the hospital.

I came across a study that was done in a "third level" (not sure exactly what this means) pediatrics hospital in Managua, which looked at the two most frequent nosocomial infections there and analyzed the cost that it added to the hospital. Now, I should note that the article is in Spanish, but I got the general ideas of the study. Most importantly, that according to this paper, the two most frequent nosocomial infections in the NICU were pneumonia acquired from mechanical ventilators and bacteriemia (this was in Spanish- is it translated the same to English?) associated with the use of intravascular catheters.

I think it would be amazing for us to use the nososano sticker to tackle one or both of these nosocomial infections. We would still be able to use the chemical detection of bacteria that we already researched a lot about, and this would be something that would be clearly visible to both hospital staff and parents of newborns in the hospitals, such that parents can demand that such medical equipment that is in constant contact with the newborn be disinfected. The study mentioned Serratia marcescens as a major cause of infection, but otherwise didn't seem to go into much detail about bacteria. (That said, it was in Spanish, so I may have missed something).

I know these were both ideas that we brainstormed, but just wanted to share this study because such a project would have an even greater impact than we thought if they can tackle some of the most frequent nosocomial infections.

Thoughts?

~Neta