Big Data and Patient Safety
Antimicrobial Drug Resistance
Antimicrobial drug resistance (ADR) is a global health problem. It results in hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, and its social and economic costs are likely to increase substantially if public health responses are not identified to manage current trends. ADR results from both overuse in general (e.g., agriculture) and misuse (e.g., prescription for viral infections, societal prophylactic use, etc.). Many health organizations and governments have instituted stewardship and management policies aimed at stemming therapeutic misuse, but most of these efforts are limited in their generalizability by their grounding in particular institutional systems, and by focusing only on the clinical and pharmaceutical distribution end of the problem. A broader approach to surveillance is needed. This project proposes to bring cross-disciplinary data scientists and health professionals together to pursue three strategic objectives: (1) surveillance (how big is the problem, where is the problem, etc.), (2) decision-support (development of metrics and dashboard systems for monitoring antibiotic resistance, and (3) integration (identifying techniques for complementary data integration across EHRs and extra-clinical data sources (social media, web-based data, governmental data, insurance data, etc.).