Table 1 Summary of the interview statements

Background of the participants

• IPC physicians and nurses

• Hospitals of all care levels (I-III)

Current general surveillance organisation

• Mainly manual chart review

• In some hospitals still mainly paper based

• Surveillance mostly based on KISS [16], different choice of modules for each hospital

• Staff which was responsible for data collection varied between hospitals: (care level I-II physicians on the wards, care level III mostly IPC nurses)

• Surveillance usually limited to high risk areas

Most time consuming steps

• Collection of (paper based) documents on the wards

• Further inquiries with personnel on the wards

• Collection and aggregation of data from different digital data sources/subsystems

• Manual review of collected data

Data availability/access to digital data sources

• Most but not all interviewees had access to digital patient-related data

• Access ways and data quality varied considerably

• Different combination of HIS, LIS, PDMS and (if available) IPC software in all hospitals

• Access to structured microbiological data in LIS of external laboratories was limited

• Systems were not always interoperable

Software specifically for infection control

• HyBASE most frequently implemented solution

• Two locations planned implementation of the hygiene solution that was offered by their HIS provider

Perceived impediments for the introduction of IPC software:

• Lack of financial resources

• Lack of staff to implement and maintain the software

• Lack of trust in data quality

• Lacking support of the local IT department/ lack of understanding of IPC requirements

Future suggestions for improvement

• Proper implementation of malfunctioning IPC software

• Extension of functionality of the current IPC software / acquisition of additional modules

• Alert systems for infections and clusters