Surgical site infections do not need to be a common complication in the healthcare field. They can be avoided through the use of surgical site infection prevention bundles. More specifically, the bundles can be personalized to each patient to offer further infection prevention when the patient presents with a higher comorbidity risk. Hospitals could reduce their surgical site infection rates through the use of artificial intelligence combing electronic health records and calculating the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) scores to ultimately form an automatic operating room checklist. Low-risk patients will have a standard primary checklist of interventions. Higher risk patients have additional secondary and tertiary interventions added to their primary checklists.
Through a combination of literature, expert opinion, and various seminars at the APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology), I determined an evidence based primary list of SSI prevention strategies that should be standard amongst all patients. I also gained information on interventions that should be included when patients have higher CCI and ASA scores. My presentation will demonstrate the need for standardization of surgical site infection prevention strategies, the ease that would come from using an artificial intelligence robot to derive the exact intervention checklist best suited for the patient and a cost analysis to demonstrate the current spending and potential savings from using such technology.

The number of individuals born with the neural tube defect, spina bifida, is still widespread here in the United States. To briefly explain, spina bifida is a birth defect where the baby's vertebrae does not fully enclose the spinal cord. There are specifically four types of spina bifida, with varying degrees of severity. This severity can range from no symptoms to complete paralysis below the cleft area. To put this issue into perspective, approximately 166,000 individuals in the United States, today, are affected by spina bifida (National Health Institute, 2017). The purpose of the study is to determine if there is a knowledge discrepancy of health care needs between individuals who have Spina Bifida and ASU students studying a health profession. This will determine if there is a need to improve health care education of students, professionals, and members of a spina bifida association in respect to spina bifida. Not only that, this study will also identify if there is a need to increase awareness and prevention of spina bifida in the community to improve health outcomes for those affected by spina bifida. A total of 136 participants were studied with the 32-question survey. It was found, through the survey, that there was a knowledge mismatch between spina bifida members and ASU students who were studying a health profession. This knowledge mismatch was also compared with how well they answered the various questions as a group.