BRIT - optimising antibiotic prescribing
Antibiotic use and prescribing is highly variable across the NHS, leading to variable outcomes for patients. The BRIT project have developed a “datalab” infrastructure for collecting and analysing data on prescribing, clinical interventions and patient demographics from individual GP practices, and makes local data comparisons to the national data dashboard at www.britanalytics.uk. With a bi-weekly upload of new data, this "learning healthcare system" allows GP practices who have signed up, to see the impact of their applied interventions to improve and optimise practice level prescribing of antibiotics.
About
Building Rapid Interventions to reduce antimicrobial resisTance and over-prescribing of antibiotics: BRIT
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the major global public health challenges of the 21st Century. Overuse of antibiotics and ineffective prescribing contributes to the rise of AMR and one of the main targets of antibiotic stewardship programmes in the UK is the primary care setting, where 81% of antibiotic prescribing take place. However, antibiotic use and prescribing is highly variable across the NHS, leading to variable outcomes for patients. The BRIT project analysed aggregated research data from over 300 GP practices in England to understand the drivers, and the impact, of inappropriate prescribing. (www.britanalytics.uk) From here, the BRIT team developed and implemented at scale the “datalab” infrastructure for collecting and analysing data on prescribing, clinical interventions and patient demographics from individual GP practices. This “learning healthcare system”, established entirely within the secure NHS HSCN data network, enables clinicians to deliver a better quality of care by acting on the feedback provided by BRIT on analyses of their own practice data around antibiotic prescribing. The BRIT datalab was launched initially to GP’s in Greater Manchester, an area recognised as high prescribers of antibiotics nationally. Subsequent rollout has seen BRIT established in practices across the UK using a data service provider to extract data from individual GP practices, and the establishment of the BRIT datalab in Data Centres where local data is analysed and returned to the GP whilst remaining within the DataCentre's infrastructure.
