2026 Healthcare Surfaces Summit Convenes Experts to Advance Safer Environments

Healthcare systems face rising healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). They are under pressure to deliver safer, more sustainable care. ISSA, the Association for Cleaning & Facility Solutions, will convene leading healthcare, science, and hygiene experts for the 2026 Healthcare Surfaces Summit. This gathering will focus on the critical role of surfaces in patient safety.

ISSA Healthcare and the Healthcare Surfaces Institute (HSI), a division of ISSA, will host the two-day Summit on May 5 to 6 at ISSA global headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois. The event will gather clinicians, infection preventionists, environmental services leaders, scientists, manufacturers, distributors, and regulatory experts.

“At a time when healthcare systems are under extraordinary pressure, surface safety can no longer be treated as an afterthought,” said Linda Lybert, ISSA Healthcare Lead and Founder and Executive Director of HSI. “The choices we make about surfaces—how they’re designed, tested, cleaned, and maintained—have direct consequences for patients, worker safety, and environmental sustainability. This summit is about aligning science with practice and innovation across real-life environments.”

This year’s summit is looking at surface intelligence, which means many things. From the summit’s perspective, it is a framework reshaping how healthcare environments approach surface selection, cleaning, and infection prevention by recognizing the critical role surfaces play in patient safety and the need to rethink traditional surface-care practices.

During the two-day event, participants will:

• Discuss the upcoming research project on environmental cleaning and innovative tools to support effective cleaning.
• Address persistent gaps between manufacturers’ instructions for use and real-world clinical conditions.
• Collaborate across disciplines to identify actionable priorities for the year ahead.
• Launch task forces with defined objectives—ranging from guidance development to research initiatives and practical tools for healthcare facilities.

“The findings and collaborations that emerge from this summit have real-world consequences,” Lybert added. “They influence how hospitals operate, how products are developed, how environmental services cleaning staff are trained, and ultimately how well we protect patients around the world.”

As the association for cleaning & facility solutions, ISSA plays a unique role in bringing together stakeholders who influence every stage of the healthcare surface lifecycle—from product design and testing to deployment, education, and ongoing use in clinical environments.

One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide in 2023 were antibiotic-resistant, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). AMR is directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths annually, with projections suggesting a rise to 10 million by 2050.  Between 2018 and 2023, AMR rose in over 40% of the pathogen-antibiotic combinations monitored, with an average annual increase of 5-15%.

According to the WHO statistics, one out of every 10 people who seek treatment in a healthcare facility will acquire an HAI, which is an illness completely unrelated to why they sought treatment. Of these infections, one-third will be antimicrobial resistant. AMR is directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths annually, with projections suggesting a rise to 10 million by 2050.

Registration for the 2026 Healthcare Surfaces Summit is now open. Early registration is encouraged due to limited capacity. Learn more and register here.