An informatics team at University of California-San Francisco Health has successfully used electronic health records data to identify the source of hospital infections by tracking the movements of more than 85,000 patients admitted to one of its medical centers.
Identifying the source of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections in hospitals, bacterium associated with significant morbidity and mortality, is no easy task because of the complex interactions and location changes of patients hospitalized in those healthcare facilities.
