Digital-based emergency prevention and control system: enhancing infection control in psychiatric hospitals

Background: The practical application of infectious disease emergency plans in mental health institutions during the ongoing pandemic has revealed significant shortcomings. These manifest as chaotic management of mental health care, a lack of hospital infection prevention and control (IPC) knowledge among medical staff, and unskilled practical operation. These factors result in suboptimal decision-making and emergency response execution. Consequently, we have developed a digital-based emergency prevention and control system to reinforce IPC management in psychiatric hospitals and enhance the hospital IPC capabilities of medical staff.

Methods: The system incorporates modern technologies such as cloud computing, big data, streaming media, and knowledge graphs. A cloud service platform was established at the PaaS layer using Docker container technology to manage infectious disease emergency-related services. The system provides application services to various users through a Browser/Server Architecture. The system was implemented in a class A tertiary mental health center from March 1st, 2022, to February 28th, 2023. Twelve months of emergency IPC training and education were conducted based on the system. The system's functions and the users' IPC capabilities were evaluated.

Results: A total of 116 employees participated in using the system. The system performance evaluation indicated that functionality (3.78 ± 0.68), practicality (4.02 ± 0.74), reliability (3.45 ± 0.50), efficiency (4.14 ± 0.69), accuracy (3.36 ± 0.58), and assessability (3.05 ± 0.47) met basic levels (> 3), with efficiency improvement and practicality achieving a good level (> 4). After 12 months of training and study based on the system, the participants demonstrated improved emergency knowledge (χ² = 37.69, p < 0.001) and skills (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that the digital-based emergency IPC system has the potential to enhance the emergency IPC knowledge base and operational skills of medical personnel in psychiatric hospitals. Furthermore, the medical personnel appear to be better adapted to the system. Consequently, the system has the capacity to facilitate the emergency IPC response of psychiatric institutions to infectious diseases, while simultaneously optimising the training and educational methodologies employed in emergency prevention and control. The promotion and application of this system in psychiatric institutions has the potential to accelerate the digitalisation and intelligence construction of psychiatric hospitals.