Monitoring of antimicrobial therapy by an integrated computer program

To assess the impact of the setting-up of a computer program designed by the Hospital Pharmacy Department as a tool that provides information for the antimicrobial therapy monitoring. To assess its influence on pharmaceutical costs.

The computer application for the follow-up of antimicrobial treatments integrates information from the Pharmacy Department and the Microbiology Laboratory and selects all patients to whom some controlled antibiotic has been prescribed. The pharmacist reviews all the controlled antibiotic treatments, suggests any change to the physician if needed and quantifies the economic impact of the accepted interventions.

On average, 12.5% of controlled antibiotic treatments warranted a pharmaceutical intervention, and 92% of them were accepted. The most frequent interventions related to prescriptions were change of dosage and administration route and related to the disease were in respiratory and urinary tract infections. From the economic point of view, the accepted interventions represented a saving of 12,087,029 pesetas (83,359 $)/year, on average.

The applied computer program resulted a useful tool for a clinical pharmacist to reach more correct antibiotical therapeutics and better cost-effectiveness relation. It also helped to achieve favorable clinical outcomes.