Rome · Infection prevention, digital and AI
I’m Małgorzata Wachocka. For seventeen years I have worked inside one of Italy’s largest university hospitals, turning infection-prevention rules into daily practice. Now I help hospitals get ready for the digital and AI tools that will support it.
Where AI meets the ward
Digital surveillance and AI can make infection prevention faster and sharper. They only work when the layers underneath are sound. I work across all four, so tools land on wards that are ready for them.
AI and decision support
Early warning, risk prediction, automated audit and monitoring. Useful only when the layers below are sound.
Digital systems
Surveillance platforms, dashboards and traceability that turn scattered results into one picture.
Data
Sampling, audits, microbiology and checklists. If this is weak, every tool above it is guessing.
Ward practice
Water, air, surfaces, devices and hands. Where infection is prevented, or not.
Expertise
Patients meet water, air, surfaces, devices and hands all at once. Most hospitals manage them in silos, with data in five different places. I look at them together.
Legionella and water safety
Legionella risk lives in pipes, taps and showers long before it shows up in a patient. I help teams build surveillance that finds it early and turns sampling results into decisions.
Digitalrisk-based sampling schedules, rapid PCR screening and one dashboard for every outlet.
Controlled rooms and building work
Operating theatres, controlled-contamination rooms and wards under renovation. I have monitored particles and fungal spores on live hospital building sites without stopping clinical care.
Digitalcontinuous particle counts and alert thresholds during building work.
Environmental audit
Audits that check what is really cleaned, not what the schedule says. Sampling, feedback and a short list of fixes the ward can own.
Digitalaudit data captured on the ward, trended over time, fed back in days not months.
Reprocessing workflows
Endoscopes and reusable devices pass through many hands. I build self-assessment checklists that close the gap between the written procedure and the bench.
Digitaltraceability from patient to endoscope to washer-disinfector cycle.
Hand hygiene and gloves
Everyone knows the five moments. Fewer people do them every shift. My work looks at what actually changes behaviour: training, feedback and smarter glove use.
Digitalmonitoring and feedback that support people, instead of policing them.
Work with me
Three ways to bring seventeen years of hospital practice, and a clear view of what digital tools can do, to your team.
Insights
Digital surveillance and AI can make infection prevention faster and sharper. They cannot make it happen. Here is what has to be true first.
Five years of proactive environmental surveillance taught us that the best Legionella result is the one you get before anyone is ill.
We asked 542 colleagues what they know about hand hygiene. The answers show where training works and where it quietly fails.
Endoscope reprocessing fails in small, quiet steps. A self-assessment checklist built with experts helped three wards find them.
About
I work in hospital hygiene and infection control at a leading university hospital in Rome, teach future prevention professionals at Università Cattolica, and publish on what makes prevention work in real wards.
Teaching on the prevention health professions degree, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, Rome. Still teaching today.
Prevention technician in the hospital hygiene team of Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS: HAI surveillance, environmental audit, Legionella and water safety, indoor air, construction risk.
Led practical training and placements for the degree in prevention techniques in the environment and workplaces, until 2023.
Co-authored the proactive environmental surveillance model and the endoscope reprocessing checklist.
Teaching coordinator of the first-level Master’s in Safety and Risk Management for Public Health at Università Cattolica.
Alongside my hospital and university roles, I bring seventeen years of practice to organisations that want prevention to work on the ward, not just on paper.