Monitoring of Antimicrobial therapy by an integrated computer program

Objective: To assess the impact of the setting-up of a computer program des igned by the Hospital Pharmacy Department as a tool that provides informati on for the antimicrobial therapy monitoring. To assess its influence on pha rmaceutical costs. Material and method: The computer application for the follow-up of antimicr obial treatments integrates information from the Pharmacy Department and th e Microbiology Laboratory and selects all patients to whom some controlled antibiotic has been prescribed. The pharmacist reviews all the controlled a ntibiotic treatments, suggests any change to the physician if needed and qu antifies the economic impact of the accepted interventions. Results: 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 dos age and administration route and related to the disease were in respiratory and urinary tract infections. From the economic point of view, the accepte d interventions represented a saving of 12,087,029 pesetas (83,359 $)/year, on average. Conclusion: The applied computer program resulted a useful tool for a clini cal pharmacist to reach more correct antibiotical therapeutics and better c ost-effectiveness relation. It also helped to achieve favorable clinical ou tcomes.