Help
Welcome to the online help for Proxximos’ Safer Care. Please follow the appropriate link below to jump to the details.
Last updated: 23rd September 2025
Welcome to the online help for Proxximos’ Safer Care. Please follow the appropriate link below to jump to the details.
About Safer Care from Proxximos
What do all the terms like Case, Contact and Encounter mean?
About Digital Contact Tracing
How are Contaminations identified?
Why does Safer Care show different results?
About Infection Control
How to read the list of current Cases
How to decide if a Contact is at risk
About Tag Management
How to assign a tracking badge (tag) to someone or something
How to change a badge assignment
Troubleshooting Safer Care
Why did the Analysis not get to 100%?
About Safer Care from Proxximos
What does Safer Care do?
Safer Care is a Digital Contact Tracing system that quickly identifies people at risk of being infected. This allows those working on infection prevention and control to stop infection spreading and to identify those most at risk of becoming ill.
What does Safer Care not do?
Safer Care is not used for tracking peoples’ general movements. It can only be used to identify encounters between people where there is a risk an infection may spread.
How does Safer Care work?
Safer Care works by searching through a secure database that stores the movement of people and equipment to identify encounters where there is a risk an infection may spread. It does this by calculating the distance and time that people are next to each other and which room they are in while this happens.
Users of Safer Care enter the details of a known Case – the person who is ill and the nature of their infection. Safer Care then uses the Trust’s policies for contact tracing to look for relevant encounters during the period of the Case.
Who can use Safer Care?
The main users of Safer Care are the IPC, Ward Manager and Occupational Health teams seeking to identify Contacts at risk. Ward staff may also use the system, particularly when there is potential contamination of equipment or facilities that need to be cleaned.
What do all the terms like Case, Contact and Encounter mean?
A list of the key terms and abbreviations is shown in the table below.
| Term | Abbreviation | Description |
| Infection Case | Case | Person identified to have a potential or confirmed infection of a communicable disease of interest to the healthcare organisation |
| Contact | Contact | Person identified to be at risk of receiving an infection from a Case by dint of one or more Encounters |
| Contamination | Contamination | A fixture or asset identified to be at risk of being contaminated by a Case |
| Encounter | Encounter | The co-location or close proximity for a period of time between a Case and a Contact as defined by the deploying Healthcare organisation’s policies for each communicable disease |
| Hospital Acquired Infection | HAI | Infections acquired by Patients whilst in Hospital which often result in further treatment and extended stay |
| Infection Prevention and Control | IPC | The practice and task of tracking and managing infections within Healthcare organisations, typically provided by an experienced team of healthcare professionals |
| Occupational Health | OH | The team tasked with looking after the health of staff in a healthcare organisation |
| Digital Contact Tracing | DCT | The application of software and algorithms to data feeds from RTLS to identify and manage the Contacts and Contaminations for a Case |
| Real Time Location System | RTLS | A system that tracks the location of people and assets in near real time. For the purposes of DCT, this needs to be able to meet high performance thresholds for accuracy and frequency. |
| Direct Transmission | Direct | The transmission of infection by touch between people |
| Indirect Transmission | Indirect | The transmission of infection by contamination of a thing, such as a sink or portable ultra-sound machine |
| Airborne Transmission | Airborne | The transmission of infection by particles that float in the air and which could travel some distance across a room |
| Droplet Transmission | Droplet | The transmission of infection by droplets, typically when a person speaks, and which is generally within a couple of meters |
About Digital Contact Tracing
What is an infection Case?
An infection Case is a person identified to have a potential or confirmed infection with a communicable disease of interest to the healthcare organisation. This might be Measles, C.diff, Covid or some 40 other diseases.
A Case is defined by its Infection Site (such as Respiratory or Gastrointestinal) and, if known, its Pathogen. Further details such as the date the symptoms arose are also important to find relevant Contacts.
How are Contacts identified?
Safer Care identifies Contacts by searching through a secure database that stores the movement of people and equipment to identify encounters where there is a risk an infection may spread. It does this by calculating the distance and time that people are next to each other and which room they are in while this happens.
Users of Safer Care enter the details of a known Case – the person who is ill and the nature of their infection. Safer Care then uses the Trust’s policies for contact tracing to look for relevant encounters during the period of the Case.
Some pathogens are transmitted by Droplets in the Air, some are more Airborne and others can be transmitted directly by touch. Some can be transmitted via contaminated things. This is all taken into account in the search process.
How are Contaminations identified?
Safer Care identifies Contaminations by searching through a secure database that stores the movement of people and equipment to identify encounters where there is a risk an infection may spread. It does this by calculating the distance and time that someone is near a tracked piece of equipment or fixture.
Contaminations are only identified for pathogens that can be transmitted indirectly.
Why does Safer Care show different results?
Some pathogens are transmitted by Droplets in the air, some are more Airborne and others can be transmitted directly by touch. This is all taken into account in the search for encounters and so you may see different methods presented in the results depending on which pathogen is involved.
Who wears a tracking badge?
All patients and staff who agree to participate will wear the tracking badge. In some cases, other people may also participate – such as visitors – depending on the approach being taken by your Trust.
How to access Safer Care
You need a login account to access Safer Care. If you would like one, please ask your manager. If your Trust includes your role in the use of Safer Care you will receive an email inviting you to log into the system.
Safer Care is a web based application that you access through your browser. No installation is required, but IT may need to enable your PC for you to access Safer Care.
About Infection Control
How to read the list of current Cases
The main page that comes up after logging in is the Infection Safe page. You navigate to this via the Infection Safe link which is top and centre of the page.
This page shows you an Infection Control Summary – a table of current and recent Cases. The table shows the following information:
| Field | Description |
| Case Name | Name of the Person who is ill. This may be their actual name, or it may be a participant ID depending on the set up of the system in your Trust. |
| Role | Role of the person who is ill. |
| Case Status | The current status of the Case. Open means it is actively being worked on. Closed means that it is no longer being worked on. Withdrawn means that the case was either raised by mistake, or is no longer relevant. |
| Onset | The time and date that the symptoms started to appear for the person who is ill. |
| Pathogen (type) | The disease of the person who is ill. It may be that only the type of the disease is known in which case this will be the only item shown. |
| Infection Status | A record of whether test results have confirmed the pathogen of the person who is ill. If not, then it will show as ‘suspected’. This status does not affect the search for Contacts and/or Contaminations. |
| # Contacts | The total number of people found by the system that have been exposed to the Case. |
| # Visit | The number of places of significant interest that have been visited by the Case (only relevant for pathogens with Indirect transmission, so this field will often say ‘0’) . |
| # Touches | The number of pieces of tracked equipment that may have been touched by the Case (only relevant for pathogens with Indirect transmission, so this field will often say ‘0’). Untracked items of equipment will not show up in this data. |
| Opened on | The data and time that the Case was entered into Safer Care. |
| Opened by | The login name of the person that entered the Case into Safer Care. |
| A network icon – this a ‘button’ that takes you through to the details of a Case. |
How to raise a new Case
To raise a new Case, go to the Infection Safe page that shows the Infection Control Summary table. At the top right of the table, select the button ‘Add new infection case’. This will take you to a page where you can enter the details of a new Case.
First, select and/or type the name of the infected person. You can also type in the label of the tag that thy are currently wearing (which is particularly useful if you are using participant IDs instead of names). Select the person that is ill.
Second input the date and time that the symptoms first arose. You can either select the calendar and clock icons and use the controls that appear or enter the details directly using the keyboard.
Continue working down the page to select the Infection Site and, if known, the Pathogen. These choices are linked. Once you have selected a site, the list of Pathogens is filtered to highlight only those relevant. The filter will work both ways – so choosing a Pathogen first then filters the Infection Sites.
The ‘Search From’ field is automatically filled out from a combination of the Onset date and how many days the Pathogen may be infectious before this. This cannot be changed.
The ‘Search To’ field is automatically filled out from a combination of the Onset date and how many days the Pathogen may be infectious after this (up to the current time). This can be changed; for example, if you know that mitigations have already been put in place.
Your login details will be shown in the Case opened by field. This cannot be changed.
Finally tick Case Confirmed if the infection has been clinically confirmed.
Do a quick check of the fields and press ‘Save case and show consequences’. This starts the search process and takes you through to the Case details page where you will see the analysis is underway.
Expect the search to take around 20 seconds for each day of analysis. For example a Covid case would typically look back 3 days prior to the Onset and take about a minute to complete if you are responding immediately to the presence of symptoms.
How to Investigate a Case
As the search completes the Case Consequences page will fill out. The % complete on the top right shows how far through the analysis process you are.
The details of the Case are shown in the left panel. Only the Case Status and Infection Status fields can be changed.
The methods of transmission that are relevant for the Case are shown in buttons above the main table which shows the Contacts and/or Contaminations found by the analysis. The table shows the results just for the selected transmission method.
| Field | Description |
| Name | Name of the Contact person for direct, airborne and droplet contacts, or
Name of the Asset or Fixture for an indirect contact. |
| Role | Role of the Contact person, or
Type of Asset or Fixture. |
| Encounters | Number of discrete encounters between the Case and the Contact, Asset or Fixture. |
| Start Time | Time the first encounter starts. |
| Duration | Total duration of all the encounters combined. |
| Proximity | The median distance between the Case and Contact for the encounters. |
| Primary Room | The main room that the encounter takes place in. This is shown for Airborne transmissions in place of Proximity. |
| Intensity | A measure of how intense the encounters are. This is based on the policy for the pathogen combined with the duration and the proximity of each encounter.
One encounter at the policy duration and proximity gives an intensity score 1. This number grows if the duration is longer or the proximity is shorter. The calculation of intensity is as follows:
|
| Risk | This is a field where the risk that the Contact has been infected can be recorded. This is based on clinical judgement and local knowledge of the rooms where the encounters take place.
Risks can be recorded for each Encounter and/or for the Contact. Three risk levels are available: High, Medium and Low. A fourth setting is available where it is clear that there is no risk: None. For example, if the encounter shows that the two people are in different rooms. Risks that have yet to be set are shown Open. |
| Location Icon | The icon is a ‘button’ which navigates to the Replay Encounter page where the movements of this Contact with the Case can be reviewed for each encounter. |
How to decide if a Contact is at risk
The summary data presented in the Case Consequences table may be enough to determine risk. If so, this can be entered in the table directly.
Three risk levels are available: High / Medium / Low. A fourth setting is available where it is clear that there is no risk – for example if the encounter shows that the two people are in different rooms. Risks that have yet to be set are shown Open.
Selecting the location icon navigates to the Replay Encounter page where the movements of the Case and Contact during each encounter can be reviewed. This page also provides fields to record the risk that the Contact has been infected.
How to replay an Encounter
Select the Location icon in the table on the Case Consequences page to navigate to the Replay Encounter page where the movements of the Case and Contact during each encounter can be ‘played’. This page also provides fields to record the risk that the Contact has been infected.
On the Left: The Case details are shown in the panel on the left.
At the Top: The summary of all encounters for the Contact is shown in the panel on the top. The currently recorded risk for the Contact is also shown and can be updated here.
At the bottom: Individual encounters are shown in the main area which shows a map. When there is more than one encounter, these are listed in the drop down field under the map. The currently recorded risk for the encounter is shown and can be updated here.
To play an encounter, either press the play icon or drag the control across the map. The movements of Case and Contact are presented as coloured dots on the map. Each dot represents 10 seconds of movement – the head and should icon showing the ‘current’ location.
Three risk levels are available: High / Medium / Low. A fourth setting is available where it is clear that there is no risk – for example if the encounter shows that the two people are in different rooms. Risks that have yet to be set are shown Open.
Note: It only takes one encounter of high risk to mean that the Contact is at high risk of infection transmission.
About Tag Management
How to assign a tracking badge (tag) to someone or something
Tracking badges (tags) can be assigned to people and to assets (equipment likely to carry infection). This is done through the ‘Organisation’ menu item on the top and centre of the application.
Select Person Management to assign a Tag to a Person. Select Asset Management to assign a Tag to an item of equipment.
Alternatively, search for the person or asset by name through the ‘Search’ icon on the top right of the application.
Select the Person or Asset to show a ‘Manage’ page. The details of the person or asset can be updated in the top panel. The tag assignment is managed in the bottom panel.
Select ‘Assign a tag’ to open a dialog box. Type in or select the Tag by its 6 character label. Note: Tags that are currently assigned show the details of this assignment here. Assigning such tags will force the system to unassign the tag from its current assignment.
Enter the date the assignment commenced. Note: A warning will appear if the date conflicts with a previous assignment. Forcing this assignment date is possible – but will result in a change to the previous assignment. A tag can only be assigned to one person or thing at a time.
How to change a badge assignment
The details of an assignments can be changed. This can be done from the person, asset or the tag perspective. Use the Organisation menu or Search field to find the appropriate entity and open the ‘Manage’ page.
Use the pencil icon to make changes to an assignment. Enter the new dates for the assignment. Note: A warning will appear if the new date conflicts with other assignments for the tag. Forcing this assignment date is possible – but will result in a change to any conflicting assignments.
A tag can only be assigned to one person or thing at a time.
Troubleshooting Safer Care
Why has the Analysis Stopped?
Case analysis is performed in the background in the cloud. The interface continues to ask for updates on the analysis for 10 minutes – which should complete well before this. If the screen shows ‘Polling Paused’ at less than 100% complete, refresh the browser to restart the polling process.
Once the analysis is underway, it is possible to navigate away from the Consequences page and come back later to see the results.
Each Analysis should take about 20 seconds per day of infection search. If it takes significantly longer this is an error that should be raised with Proxximos to fix.
Why did the Analysis not get to 100%?
The Analysis should always get to 100%. Sometimes it may take a while – for example when the search period for an historical case of TB or Pseudomonas is long. If it doesn’t complete this is an error that should be raised with Proxximos to fix.
If the screen shows ‘Polling Paused’ at less than 100% complete, refresh the browser to restart the polling process.
Why is the Analysis slow ?
Each Analysis should take about 20 seconds per day of infection search. For example a Covid case would typically look back 3 days prior to the Onset and take about a minute to complete if you are responding immediately to the presence of symptoms. If it takes significantly longer this is an error that should be raised with Proxximos to fix.
The analysis is looking through lots of location information to find the bits that matter for infection control. Safer Care is doing lots of calculations to make this work – so it does take a little time.
Need more help ?
Please email support@proxximos.com outlining your need and how we might help and we’ll get back to you in business hours.
If the issue is urgent, please call our support line on 0333 577 8875 between 8am and 6pm daily.