Research Projects

PathobBot

AI-supported transmission analysis for the prevention of hospital infections

Start: 02/2023

End: 05/2025

How can hospital infections be detected more quickly and prevented more effectively? How can extensive patient and laboratory data be analyzed automatically? The PathoBot project is developing an AI-supported software solution for efficiently detecting and analyzing pathogen transmission to improve patient safety and reduce the burden on hospital staff.

With around 500,000 cases annually in Germany alone, hospital infections pose a considerable medical, organizational, and economic challenge. Approximately 20,000 of these cases are fatal. The manual analysis of patient and laboratory data is time-consuming, error-prone, and sometimes too slow to interrupt infection chains in time.

PathoBot addresses this problem with a software solution that combines rule-based and AI-supported processes. Gaussian processes and self-organizing maps enable automated evaluation of existing laboratory data and potential patient contacts concerning the current transmission situation. This allows infection chains to be identified more quickly, the number of identified transmissions to be increased, and the workload of hospital staff to be significantly reduced.

By automatically evaluating medical data, PathoBot reduces the workload for medical and diagnostic specialists and supports the early detection of suspected cases. At the same time, patients benefit from faster detection of potential infection chains and thus from improved protection against hospital infections.

Role of the FZI

The FZI is developing the AI-based modules of the system. These include models for detecting clusters of findings and methods for analyzing changes in room occupancy with a view to potential pathogen transmission between patients.

In this research focus, the FZI concentrates on practical research into the key technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Innovative AI solutions are developed and transferred to application areas such as mobility, robotics, healthcare technology, logistics, production, and supply and disposal on behalf of our partners and customers.

Applied Artificial Intelligence

In this research focus, the FZI concentrates on practical research into the key technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Innovative AI solutions are developed and transferred to application areas such as mobility, robotics, healthcare technology, logistics, production, and supply and disposal on behalf of our partners and customers.

Contact

Christoph Becker

Department Manager
Division: Intelligent Systems and Production Engineering

Research Focus

Applied Artificial Intelligence

In this research focus, the FZI concentrates on practical research into the key technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Innovative AI solutions are developed and transferred to application areas such as mobility, robotics, healthcare technology, logistics, production, and supply and disposal on behalf of our partners and customers.

Funding notice:

The PathoBot project is funded by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism.

Project partner:

More projects