Using Machine Learning Techniques to Aid Empirical Antibiotic Therapy Decisions in the Intensive Care Unit of a General Hospital in Greece

In a single center study, the authors compared the performance of eight machine learning algorithms to assess antibiotic susceptibility predictions. The demographic characteristics of the patients are considered for this study, as well as data from cultures and susceptibility testing. Applying machine learning algorithms to patient antimicrobial susceptibility data, readily available, solely from the Microbiology Laboratory without any of the patient’s clinical data, even in resource-limited hospital settings, can provide informative antibiotic susceptibility predictions to aid clinicians in selecting appropriate empirical antibiotic therapy. These strategies, when used as a decision support tool, have the potential to improve empiric therapy selection and reduce the antimicrobial resistance burden.