Informatics in Infection Control

Informatics tools are becoming integral to routine infection control activities. Informatics has the potential to improve infection control outcomes in surveillance, prevention, and connections with public health. Surveillance activities include fully or semiautomated surveillance of infections, surveillance of device use, and hospital/ward outbreak investigation. Prevention activities include awareness of multidrug-resistant organism carriage on admission, enhanced interfacility communication, identifying inappropriate infection precautions, reducing device use, and antimicrobial stewardship. Public health activities include electronic communicable disease reporting, syndromic surveillance, and regional outbreak detection. The challenge for infection control personnel is in translating the knowledge gained from electronic surveillance systems into action.