The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has published proposed guidance for establishing and implementing infection prevention and control programmes across Europe. The guidance places healthcare-associated infection surveillance at the centre of effective IPC. It also calls for greater digitalisation, automation and timely access to high-quality data (ECDC, 2026).
NEX Health Intelligence
The Risk of Delayed Information
An Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) programme can introduce new guidance, training or screening procedures. The team still needs to know whether practice changed and whether patient outcomes improved.
Delayed, incomplete or heavily manual surveillance makes this difficult. It can leave teams responding to retrospective reports rather than seeing changes as they develop.
This matters for patient safety. If the effect of an intervention cannot be measured reliably, an ineffective approach may continue for longer and a successful one may not be recognised or expanded.
What the ECDC Proposes
The ECDC recommends (ECDC, 2026) monitoring structure, process and outcome indicators against defined targets.
Each type of measure answers a different question:
Structure indicators assess whether the necessary teams, resources, governance and systems are in place.
Process indicators assess whether prevention measures are being implemented consistently.
Outcome indicators assess whether infection, transmission or other patient-safety outcomes are improving.
Together, these measures help hospitals understand the problem, take action and evaluate what changed.
The guidance also identifies healthcare-associated infection surveillance as a cornerstone of national IPC programmes. It calls for progress towards digitalisation and automation, supported by appropriate funding, technology and governance.
Measuring Whether Care Is Getting Safer
Hospitals need a reliable baseline before they can judge improvement.
They then need timely data to identify changes in infection rates, investigate where those changes are occurring and assess whether they coincide with a new intervention.
This creates a practical improvement cycle:
Measure the current problem.
Introduce a defined change.
Monitor implementation and outcomes.
Adapt the approach using the evidence.
Automation can support this work by reducing manual data processing and giving IPC teams more time to interpret results, investigate risks and work with clinical teams.
What This Means for Hospitals
The ECDC proposal reflects a broader move towards IPC programmes that are measurable, continuously monitored and supported by data.
Hospitals should be able to see where infection risks are changing and whether their prevention strategies are working. This helps IPC teams direct limited time and resources towards the areas most likely to improve patient safety.
At NEX, this is central to how we think about infection intelligence. Better surveillance should help teams understand what is happening now and learn whether the actions they take are making care safer.
Read the full proposal from the ECDC.
