The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy
A practical guide to structured data processing for antimicrobial resistance surveillance
By Harrison ML, Tang M, Ozaygen A and 4 others.
Abstract
Background
Efforts have been made to standardize antimicrobial resistance (AMR) data collection globally. There remain challenges in improving the efficiency of data collection and processing to enable comparison of high-quality AMR data across settings. We aimed to design a causal analytic workflow to standardize data processing and provide structure for quality monitoring using a generic raw data structure.
Methods
We identified challenges in processing AMR and infection surveillance data, including a high time burden, differing raw data structures, differences in the identification and management of likely contaminants and the laborious task of managing antimicrobial prescription and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) data. Using two neonatal infection surveillance databases, we developed a standardized processing method to provide a generic data structure for robust cross-database comparisons.