The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS)

Kathleen Verceglio-Elvir is Associate Brand Manager at Dial Professional . We discuss: The new Dial Clean and Gentle Antibacterial hand soap It's an antibacterial hand soap that is dye-free, fragrance, free, free from sulfates, parabens, SLS, and SLES. The demand for efficacious, natural hand-soaps. The importance of hand hygiene beyond the pandemic. ... UPDATE: Dial Clean and Gentle Antibacterial...

Jim Epstein is President at Intercon . We discuss: Intercon's new Blue Planet Disinfectant . As Jim puts it, "it's everything you want in a disinfectant and nothing you don't want". Finding a way to stabilize Hypochlorous Acid for 18 months enabled a commercially viable, hospital-grade disinfectant that breaks down into simple salt and water after use, leaving no chemical residue. Jim's observatio...

John Strom is Vice-President - General Manager, Connected Solutions at Georgia-Pacific . We discuss: GP's new KOLO Smart Monitoring System Data-driven cleaning and how it alleviates labor shortages and improves your customers' experience. CHIPS Value Drivers (Cost, Hygiene, Image, Productivity, Sustainability) How COVID has made hygiene table stakes and driven high-traffic spaces to think more abo...

Patricia (Patty) Olinger , is the Executive Director of Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) , a division of ISSA .   We discuss: - The incredible growth of the GBAC STAR Facility Accreditation . There are now over 3,000 GBAC STAR facilities in just 18 months! - The types of facilities that are benefiting from GBAC STAR. - How GBAC is reaching new customers and the biggest opportunities Patty se...

Jason Jones is the Director of Strategic Channel Development - Air Treatment at Fellowes Brands . We discuss: - Fellowes AeraMax Pro line of commercial air purifiers which recently tested at a 99.9999% capture rate of COVID-19 in a single pass. - The importance of clean air in our shared spaces during and beyond the pandemic. - Their success in K thru 12 classrooms and the opportunities in other c...

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our systems and consumed our attention since March 2020. Unfortunately, the other pathogens didn't go away and, in some ways, we're given a new chance to thrive. Patient beds were taken out of the known environments and pushed to the hallway so overworked hospital staff could care for a nonstop influx of patients. PPE and cleaning products were in short supply, so...

Elizabeth "EC" Caley and Sam Molyneux have both made a career of working with large, complex data sets, and deconvoluting them to ask simple questions. Whether researching the genetic drivers that cause normal tissues to become cancerous, analyzing vast amounts of scientific literature, or identifying the missing data preventing the next breakthrough, EC and Sam have been aligned in their goal to...

In July 2020, scientists citing the precautionary principle said  "It Is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)" . They were  rebuffed  a month later by experts who cited a lack of evidence and argued: "the concerns raised by the authors are not borne out in clinical experience". Nearly a year later, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health O...

It may seem premature to be worrying about the next pandemic while we are still knee-deep in the current one. However, the steps required to end the COVID-19 crisis, if executed properly, will prepare us for future pandemics. Today we're talking with Patty Olinger, Executive Director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) . GBAC is a division of the International Sanitary Supply Association...

Amidst the damage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been given a potent tool that, if properly harnessed, could help us communicate more effectively about everything in public health. For effective communication, the very first thing we need to do is create a connection with our audience. For that, metaphors and shared experience are two of our most effective tools. These, however, are har...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen by most objective measures. We're breaking records for cases, deaths, and hospitalizations on a regular basis, and many of our hospitals are operating at or near capacity. Further complicating the situation, scientists are tracking the "UK variant" that is more transmissible, and our vaccine distribution has fallen well short of expectations. Emergent prob...

When she was just 8 years old, Dr. Saskia Popescu's step-mother handed her a copy of  The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus . That simple act kicked off a string of events that would positively impact thousands of lives. At TIPS, we believe that one person can make a difference and everyone should try. Sometimes that person becomes a renowned infectious diseases...

Growing up on a mountain range in Austria, Florian Krammer was immersed in nature from a very young age. His interest in plants and animals led him to science, and ultimately to university where he would study food science and biotechnology. His interest in food fermentation soon morphed into the pursuit of a PhD in a laboratory working on the influenza virus and flu vaccines. From there, Florian'...

At the age of 22, first-year medical student, Richard Heinzl, was looking for an adventure while selecting his elective at McMaster University. While hitchhiking in Uganda, a country in the throes of civil war, a jeep pulled up in front of the canteen where he was grabbing a bite to eat. The jeep had a flag emblazoned with the letters M-S-F, and out of it jumped a bunch of doctors, but not like an...

While on a bucket list trip to Egypt, Steffanie Strathdee's husband Tom Patterson fell ill with what they first assumed to be food poisoning. They soon discovered it was much more serious. Tom was diagnosed with pancreatitis and gallstones. The gallstones had blocked his biliary duct, which had caused an abscess the size of a small football to form in his abdomen. When the fluid inside the abscess...

In Part 1, we heard David Ricci's harrowing tale of volunteering at an HIV clinic in Kolkata, India where he was hit by a train. His life-threating injuries lead to the amputation of his leg at a clinic in the slums. Despite that traumatic experience, he endured even greater trauma when he returned home to Seattle and spent over a year combatting an antibiotic-resistant infection.   David found a...

In 2011, David was working at an HIV orphanage in Kolkata, India when he was hit by a train. He suffered profound injuries to his leg and was rushed to a clinic in the slums by rickshaw where his leg was amputated just below the knee. When he returned home to Seattle about a month later, he learned that he had been infected by several antibiotic-resistant bacteria. His doctors did not have a clear...

Legionellosis accounts for thousands of hospital admissions and many deaths. It has a 10% mortality rate for those infected and that rate goes up as high as 25% in a healthcare setting. The good news is, it's controllable. In fact, it's largely an engineering problem that has known, low-tech controls. Given the prevalence of the issue, the high mortality rate and increased risk in healthcare setti...

What happens to an infectious agent once it leaves the human body? Well, it ends up in our cars, airplanes, food, water, and soil. If we know how that contagion behaves "in the wild", then we'll be able to kill it, filter it, or otherwise prevent it from proliferating, and potentially improve the lives of millions of people in the process. This is the study of Environmental Microbiology and it's a...

Sepsis is not an infection. Rather, it's your body's overwhelming reaction to an infection and can lead to some serious health issues. In fact, sepsis is the #1 cause of death for patients in hospitals. Sepsis definitions and protocols have been around for some time, but have been undergoing major changes. Additionally, sepsis is under scrutiny from CMS at the federal level and is subject to publi...

There are two things I can say for sure. First, healthcare-associated infections (HAI) cause a lot of suffering and cost a lot of money. Second, it's really hard to sell into healthcare, even when you have an innovative product that attacks a well-known problem in a common-sense way. On this episode, we get to dive into both of those things. Infection Control and Environmental Surfaces Over the pa...

Clostridium difficile  (klos-TRID-e-um dif-uh-SEEL), often called  C. difficile  or  C. diff  impacts 453,000 people every year. And with 29,000 associated deaths, it takes more lives than AIDS and drunk-driving combined. Yet, most people have never even heard of it. That's a big problem because you can't protect yourself from a threat when you don't even know it exists. The impact on the business...

Hand hygiene is the number one line of defense when it comes to controlling the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) and infectious disease.  Since we know that antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance is on the rise, and few new antibiotics are being developed, it becomes exceedingly important that we prevent people from acquiring these infections in the first place. We know that hand-...

Rik Heller is a serial entrepreneur and founder of  Wello .  A self-confessed technology and healthcare geek, Rik has also been called the Grandfather of Active RFID and holds many patents in this area that are licensed globally. With a background in math and electrical engineering, he has been working in healthcare since 1989. In 1999 Rik Heller founded FreshLoc and became a pioneer of environmen...

The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS) is a not for profit that exists to advance innovations, ideas, and processes that make a difference in global health.  TIPS extends to 30+ countries and is the key strategic partner for many notable organizations, initiatives, and events. In the past few years, TIPS has contributed millions in Scientific Impact.  Many of our successes are published on our O...