Hugs® protects more than 1.5 million infants every year in 1,300 hospitals worldwide, making it the #1 infant protection solution on the market.

 

The Challenge

Newborn infants face specific and unique security and safety risks, in the form of abduction and mother/infant mismatches. The abduction of newborns is a threat faced by all hospitals offering maternal child care services. Abductions have occurred in hospitals of varying sizes and types, in urban and rural areas, and in countries around the world.

Abduction attempts are usually carefully planned, often involve impersonation of staff or other forms of deception, and can feature violence. They can also occur in different parts of the hospital. While the majority of abductions originate in the mother’s room, a significant percentage of successful abductions have occurred in the Nursery, in Pediatrics and in other parts of the hospital.

Mother/infant mismatches are a common occurrence, in spite of the universal use of the matching ID band system. This purely manual system is prone to human error from similar or identical names, misreading numbers or returning an infant to the wrong bassinet

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Infant Protection Solutions

• Every infant wears a Wi-Fi Hugs tag on the ankle that is attached with a special tamper-detecting band.

• Exits from the Obstetrics Unit, including elevators, are monitored by Exit Controllers.

• Hugs tag features a tamper detection mechanism, and will send an alarm message if the band securing the tag to the infant is cut or detached.

• Continual supervision: The solution monitors each Hugs tag, and will generate an alarm if no messages have been received from the tag for a certain period

• Out of Unit alerts can be generated if an infant is detected outside the Obstetrics Unit, but there is no record of a staff member performing a Transport.