WhatsApp alert improves real-time antimicrobial stewardship program

AN FRANCISCO — A hospital antimicrobial stewardship program in Mexico City incorporated a smartphone messaging app as a fundamental part of real-time surveillance, improving the appropriate use of antibiotics, decreasing bacterial resistance and saving money, according to study findings presented at IDWeek.

“This is, for us, an important tool because it allows us to reduce antimicrobial use and get better patterns and rates of resistance for each antimicrobial,” Alberto Diaz-Romero, MD, an infectious disease fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Mexico City, told Infectious Disease News.

Diaz-Romero and colleagues evaluated the clinical impact of a WhatsApp group alert named “Rational Use of Antimicrobials” at a secondary health care hospital in Mexico City — General Hospital Dr. Manuel Gea González. The group alert included preauthorization and prospective audit and feedback interventions, allowing for real-time evaluation and decision of the best treatment option within a set time period of 2 hours per patient. Once alerted about a drug request, an ID team could find and assess a patient before recommending or denying the treatment.

Diaz-Romero and colleagues collected related data over a 3-year period from 2015 to 2017, including daily antibiotic dose consumption, cost savings, nosocomial bacterial resistance patterns and overall mortality rates associated with nosocomial infections. Of the 34 monitored drugs, eight were restricted and could only be prescribed by the ID team: meropenem, ertapenem, vancomycin, linezolid, quinolones, clindamycin, colistin and piperacillin/tazobactam, plus amphotericin B and echinocandin antifungals.

Source: Healio