New web applications from ANRESIS

Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms know no national borders or distinctions between humans and animals. The approach to combating resistance must therefore be international (one world) and interdisciplinary (one health). Human and veterinary medicine must be taken into account, as must agriculture and the environment.

The surveillance of antibiotic resistance and consumption is a pivotal component of the Antibiotic Resistance Strategy StAR. The Swiss Centre for Antibiotic Resistance (ANRESIS) is responsible for this surveillance in the human domain. It is a key goal of ANRESIS not only to collect data, but also to analyse and process it in such a way that it can be made available to doctors, hospitals, researchers, political decisionmakers and the general public.

ANRESIS website

The anresis.ch website provides a general overview and presents continuously updated data on antibiotic resistance and consumption in interactive graphics and tables. In addition to data from human medicine, data from veterinary medicine are also increasingly being integrated, and it is currently being looked into how environmental data can also be integrated in the future.

ANRESIS Guide for support in everyday medical practice

The newly developed ANRESIS Guide application (guide.anresis.ch, see Figure 1) replaces the previous INFECT app. The ANRESIS Guide helps clinicians choose the optimal antibiotic therapy. The current resistance data for Switzerland and also local resistance data can be displayed for each pathogen/antibiotic combination implemented in the system. In addition to the current resistance rates for bacteria in humans, the application also contains important additional information such as veterinary data, resistance in pathogenic fungi, information on natural resistance and an extended germ spectrum with multi-resistant microorganisms. Additional filter options make it easier to find data. For example, information on regional resistance rates can be retrieved. A key feature is the integration of the national antibiotic guidelines published by the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases. It is now also possible for users to create their own preselection and save it locally. The display has also been optimised for small screens.

Figure 1: The ANRESIS Guide application (guide.anresis.ch) helps clinicians choose the optimal antibiotic therapy. Important bases for this are the current resistance data, presented as dots, as well as the integrated guidelines of the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases.

ANRESIS dashboard for hospitals

To support the monitoring and optimisation of antibiotic consumption in hospitals as part of antibiotic stewardship programmes, ANRESIS provides the most important data in interactive dashboards. A dashboard is a graphical user interface for visualising data. This user-friendly tool provides an overview of the most important indicators of antibiotic consumption in a hospital or ward. It provides insights into various aspects, such as the proportion of broad-spectrum antibiotics, consumption per administration route and consumption according to the AWARE criteria (Access, Watch, Reserve). Comparisons with other Swiss hospitals are also possible. The dashboard is interactive: data can be viewed monthly or annually as required at the level of antibiotic groups or individual substances. The dashboard thus helps healthcare professionals analyse trends and define measures to optimise antibiotic use in everyday practice (see Figure 2). So far, data from about 70 hospitals have been included; other interested hospitals can contact [e-mail] to get access to the dashboard.

Figure 2: The ANRESIS Antibiotic Stewardship Dashboard allows participating hospitals to efficiently monitor and analyse antibiotic consumption. It is possible, for example, to track trends and compare consumption with other hospitals.

Outlook

With the interactive website, the ANRESIS Guide application and the antibiotic stewardship dashboard, ANRESIS provides Swiss doctors, the authorities and numerous other stakeholders with valuable tools that promote the responsible use of antibiotics and can thus reduce the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Switzerland in the long term. Further steps to expand these services, such as developing a dashboard for monitoring multi-resistant microorganisms or integrating patient-specific antibiotic consumption data, are planned and will be implemented on a continuous basis.

Summary of an article by Andreas Kronenberg, Michael Gasser, Catherine Plüss-Suard and Olivier Friedli, Swiss Centre for Antibiotic Resistance, Institute for Infectious Diseases, University of Bern, Bern

Last modification 01.11.2023