Advisory Services

Working Together to Create Safer Healthcare Environments

Leverage the expertise, research, and innovation of ISSA Healthcare and the Healthcare Surfaces Institute

Work with us one-on-one to identify gaps across your healthcare environment—from facility design and material selection to product purchasing and maintenance practices—so your spaces are built to support effective cleaning, disinfection, and long-term surface safety.

The Value of Advisory Services

Our Healthcare Surfaces Institute Division brings together healthcare professionals, scientists, EVS leaders, manufacturers, and solution providers to work collaboratively with your teams on everything from EVS training, product and surface selection, and cleanability considerations to value analysis and risk assessments—bridging silos of expertise to connect your facility teams with practical tools, strategies, and solutions that support safer healthcare environments.

For more information or a quote, please contact our team.

Who We Work With

We help healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities:

  • Gain clarity around IFUs and accompanying documents to verify consistency and reduce confusion
  • Have higher confidence in purchasing products following a full evaluation of the IFUs, companion documents, and testing data
  • Reduce the chances of voided warranties by ensuring manufacturer IFUs follow infection prevention cleaning and disinfection guidelines 
  • Reduce repair and replacement costs before purchasing products by selecting materials designed to withstand required cleaning and disinfection
  • Ensure the surface materials and products are appropriate based on location, level of contamination, and cleaning and disinfection timelines
  • Address other gaps as identified through the assessment process

 

The ability to effectively clean and disinfect healthcare environments is critical in reducing microbial contamination. We can help you:

  • Provide your clients with a comprehensive packet of information and documentation on cleaning, disinfection, care, and maintenance for the specified materials and products
  • Educate your team on the importance of surface selection and how different environments of care require materials that support effective cleaning, disinfection, durability, and long-term maintenance
  • Learn how to strategically select and integrate surfaces that support effective cleaning and disinfection practices
  • Address other gaps as identified through the assessment process

We help manufacturers of surface materials, medical devices, patient care products, and medical instruments to:

  • Build a bridge of communication that engages multiple stakeholders across areas of expertise, each of whom has different needs but is involved in the decision-making process
  • Educate teams on the challenges healthcare professionals face in following IFUs across different environments of care—supporting the development of IFUs that align with healthcare cleaning and disinfection guidelines and can be implemented effectively in practice
  • Understand barriers and challenges when working with key professionals so they have confidence when purchasing your products and services
  • Support the testing and validation process for surface disinfection compatibility to ensure products meet healthcare cleaning and disinfection requirements
  • Address other gaps as identified through the assessment process

Advisory Services Overview

Instructions for Use (IFU) Research and Evaluation

There are many challenges/ barriers to successfully implementing manufacturer IFUs; it is another to find them, understand them, ensure they are updated, and ultimately be able to implement them. Moreover, there is not just one IFU; there are many: disinfectant IFU, manufacturer IFU, infection prevention guidelines, and care and maintenance guidelines, which are companion documents.

 

 

Our team will:

  • Search for and find both the IFU and companion care and maintenance documents for the surfaces being evaluated, i.e., environmental, medical devices, patient care products, scopes, and instruments.
  • Review for any potential conflicts between all documents.
  • Review manufacturer warnings.
  • Review infection prevention guidelines and evaluate other products located in the same area to determine whether they can be cleaned and disinfected with the same type of disinfectant without causing damage.
 

 

 

Surfaces Matter™: Surface Selection for Strategic Support of Infection Prevention

The selection of surface materials has a significant impact on microbial acquisition and transmission of biofilm formation, room turnover, effective cleaning, disinfection of patient care environments and products used for patient care, sterile reprocessing of medical devices, and more.

 

 

 

Our team will:

  • Research options for the selection of surfaces that have been tested to validate cleanability and compatibility within the healthcare setting.
  • Review and provide IFUs, care and maintenance documents, and guidelines for cleaning and disinfection based on where and how materials and products will be used.
  • Receive types of cleaning disinfection and reprocessing infection prevention guidelines.
  • Receive the cleaning and disinfectant product list from the facility.

Focus Groups: Building Bridges to Sustainable Solutions

Addressing the communication gap to find sustainable solutions and reduce HAIs. Improving patient safety and reducing HAIs remains a persistent challenge. This problem is multifaceted, and at the root of the challenge is a gap in understanding and communication between diverse groups—including healthcare professionals, manufacturers, regulatory agencies, and others—which continues to put patients at risk and hinders the development of sustainable solutions.

Our team will:

  • Review manufacturer innovations and solutions within the context of real-world healthcare challenges.  
  • Work with architects and design teams to create environments of care that support efficient room turnover while meeting rigorous healthcare cleaning and disinfection guidelines

Deliverables

While deliverables may vary based on the scope of work (SOW), some examples include:

 

  • Provide a detailed report based on current state gaps, action for improvement, and future state.
  • Copies of IFUs and companion documents.
  • The IFU template meeting will be based on IPC and provider cleaning, disinfecting, and maintenance requirements.
  • A crosswalk template for use with each provider to identify specific areas requiring intervention.
  • Focus group meetings recorded for reference following each meeting.
 

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