Denver Health and the Pew Charitable Trusts this week announced the launch of a new resource to help healthcare facilities across the country support antibiotic stewardship efforts.
The Outpatient Automated Stewardship Information System (OASIS) is an open-source statistical code that can harness data from electronic health records (EHRs) to assess antibiotic prescribing and provide individualized audit and feedback reports to medical providers on their antibiotic prescribing patterns. Developed and launched at Denver Health with the support of Pew, OASIS has the ability to assess antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory conditions, acute otitis media (ear infection), and conditions that do not require antibiotics.
"Experts agree that tracking and reporting antibiotic prescribing is crucial to helping health care systems evaluate prescribing practices, ensure the appropriate use of these critical therapies, and slow the emergence of deadly antibiotic-resistant pathogens," David Hyun, MD, and Rachel Zetts, MPH, of Pew's antibiotic resistance project, wrote in a post on the Pew website. "OASIS will help address some of the long-standing barriers to these types of stewardship efforts, helping to protect individual patients and public health."
OASIS is free to download and doesn't require additional software or EHR upgrades.