In recent years there have been close, productive collaborations between engineers and infectious disease and control specialists in hospital infection control-related studies. Such studies have included projects on optimizing existing ventilation designs/parameters to reduce the risk of nosocomial/hospital-acquired infections between patients and staff, as well as air-sampling studies to detect the presence of airborne pathogens. The live, attenuated influenza virus (LAIV) vaccine has already been used in some infection control-related studies as a surrogate tracer to assist in understanding the transmission properties of the wild-type influenza virus. However, several steps are required before it can be usefully applied as a quantitative tracer in an engineering laboratory context. These include the design and optimization of an accurate and reliable (i.e. repeatable) air-sampling system which can distinguish between different concentrations of the airborne tracer virus when sampled under different ventilation set-ups. In addition, a realistic manikin patient ‘source’ and healthcare worker (HCW) ‘recipient’ is required as part of the experimental set-up to mimic real-life hospital staff-patient encounter situations, to make the results directly applicable to the related clinical environment. Our experience to date with using such a live vaccine virus tracer is described and discussed.