Improving Antibiotic Stewardship for Diarrheal Disease With Probability-Based Electronic Clinical Decision Support

Improving antibiotic stewardship in clinical settings prone to inappropriate antibiotic use has been a persistent and difficult challenge, especially for diarrheal disease management. 

This study evaluated a decision support tool that uses an algorithm of patient-specific and location-specific features to estimate the probability a case of diarrhea is caused by a virus; use of the tool did not associate with a change in antibiotic use overall. When accounting for the probability that a case was viral, a reduction in antibiotic use was found.

Antibiotic stewardship for diarrheal disease can be aided by tools that predict viral causation.