Handy microbe-hunters on the other side of the world

Anemona Hartocollis reports in the The New York Times:

“At North Shore University Hospital [pictured below] on Long Island, motion sensors, like those used for burglar alarms, go off every time someone enters an intensive care room. The sensor triggers a video camera, which transmits its images halfway around the world to India, where workers are checking to see if doctors and nurses are performing a critical procedure: washing their hands….”

NorthShoreHosp

(Thanks to investigator Sheila Carney for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS (unrelated): In the year 2004, The Vatican was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for economics, for outsourcing prayers to India.