Dashboards promoting antimicrobial stewardship in a veterinary teaching hospital

About This Grant

1 Project Summary: Veterinary teaching hospitals are important tertiary care centers for high- 2 quality, cutting-edge care of animals. As veterinary medicine has evolved to resemble human 3 medicine in complexity, it has become apparent that complications historically observed in 4 human medicine are now of consequence in veterinary medicine and efforts are needed at the 5 hospital level to reduce harm. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a critical human health 6 challenge and is reported more frequently in veterinary medicine. Not only do resistant bacterial 7 infections impact animal health and welfare, but they also have potential to cause negative 8 human health consequences through transmission of resistant bacteria or resistance genes 9 through animal contact or the shared environment. Little information is available to assess 10 impact of AMR bacterial infections in veterinary medicine, but presumably there is a significant 11 cost both in morbidity and mortality, economic output for treatment, lost productivity in animal 12 agriculture and emotional distress of animal owners and caregivers. In order to understand and 13 mitigate infections from antimicrobial resistant bacteria in a veterinary teaching hospital, the 14 collection of data related to patient outcomes, antimicrobial use and bacterial characterization, 15 including whole genome sequencing, must be performed. While obtaining data is a primary step, 16 data management, visualization and analysis is must be built to ensure data can be useful for 17 stakeholders in teaching hospitals, including faculty clinicians, trainees, students and staff. Data 18 dashboards provide this tool to tailor information that is accessible for users with varying skill in 19 data analytics. Dashboards can be configured to provide pertinent information on individual 20 providers, service and hospital wide antimicrobial use, rates of surgical site infections, 21 antimicrobial susceptibility test patterns, rates of resistant bacteria and results of environmental 22 surveillance of resistant bacteria. The purpose of this proposal is to create user-friendly data 23 dashboards for multiple metrics for the Washington State University College of Veterinary 24 Medicine Teaching Hospital for use in antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention and 25 control efforts and education. Additionally, these dashboards could be shared with other 26 Veterinary Teaching Hospitals. 27 28