COSARA: Integrated Service Platform for Infection Surveillance and Antibiotic Management in the ICU

Abstract

The Intensive Care Unit is a data intensive environment where large volumes of patient monitoring and observational data are daily generated. Today, there is a lack of an integrated clinical platform for automated decision support and analysis. Despite the potential of electronic records for infection surveillance and antibiotic management, different parts of the clinical data are stored across databases in their own formats with specific parameters, making access to all data a complex and time-consuming challenge. Moreover, the motivation behind physicians' therapy decisions is currently not captured in existing information systems. The COSARA research project offers automated data integration and services for infection control and antibiotic management for Ghent University Hospital. The platform not only gathers and integrates all relevant data, it also presents the information visually at the point of care. In this paper, we describe the design and value of COSARA for clinical treatment and infectious diseases monitoring. On the one hand, this platform can facilitate daily bedside follow-up of infections, antibiotic therapies and clinical decisions for the individual patient, while on the other hand, the platform serves as management view for infection surveillance and care quality improvement within the complete ICU ward. It is shown that COSARA is valuable for registration, real-time presentation and management of infection-related and antibiotics data.

Development of antibiotic treatment algorithms based on local ecology and respiratory surveillance cultures to restrict the use of broad-spectrum antimicrobial drugs in the treatment of hospital-acquired pneumonia in the intensive care unit: a retrospective analysis

“…The graphical interface allows the user to label infectious episodes during daily clinical rounds and interdisciplinary staff meetings to a predefined list of diagnoses in all patients admitted to the ICU. As such, the program facilitates the build-up of an extensive data-warehouse on antibiotic use and infection in the ICU [12]. During the study period treating physicians were not guided in the choice of the empirical antimicrobial by treatment algorithms.…”

WASPSS: A Clinical Decision Support System for Antimicrobial Stewardship

“…Another example is the COSARA platform [24], which is focused on infection surveillance in ICUs. It provides functionalities for the automatic integration of clinical data and clinical decision support and alerts to alarming trends, among others.…”

A Practical Approach to Clinical Antibiotic Stewardship in the ICU Patient with Severe Infection

“…130 Several electronic surveillance systems have been developed to integrate resistance data, rate of nosocomial infection, quantity and quality of antibiotic usage. [131][132][133] These longitudinal data collections are not only a time-consuming job, but also require adequate insight to analyze, interpret, and formulate conclusions and possible working points. Fortunately, evidence has shown that this kind of analysis is capable of investigating prescription patterns and subsequent formulation of ASP goals.…”