Samaritan Health Services' antimicrobial stewardship team shares how using the Firstline library, analytics and in-app notifications expands the reach of their small ASP team to engage providers across the breadth of their five-hospital health system, and how they are using it to prepare for Monkeypox.

In the broad and shifting field of medicine there is an understanding that progress is both necessary and inevitable. Healthcare providers have more access to knowledge than ever before, and this knowledge is being constantly updated and refined by experts and researchers all over the globe. As more research is done, and more studies are circulated, medical professionals are faced with an ever-growing mountain of evidence. As incredible as this vast body of knowledge is, it speaks to a specific problem that needs to be addressed - its vastness.

We trust our medical providers to take care of us, to diagnose and solve problems. Perhaps most importantly, we trust that medicine will work but face an increasingly obvious reality where this is not always the case. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, health professionals are cautioning against a silent pandemic that is ever growing: Antimicrobial Resistance.

The escalating war in Ukraine is devastating a healthcare system that supports over 40 million people. The disruption of basic public health services and mass population displacement has led to a humanitarian crisis within Ukraine as well as in neighboring nations. The Firstline platform can help.

Firstline’s Humanitarian mission is to protect the world from the rise of drug-resistant infections by helping healthcare organizations deliver localized infectious disease guidelines on a widely accessible device. We recently spoke with Dr. Kelechi Eguzo, who is leading the effort to develop standardized guidance in Abia State, Nigeria using the Firstline platform.

Our mission at Firstline is to bring people and knowledge together. With that in mind, we created our Community Content Library, to support knowledge sharing between ID specialists and expedite that flow of knowledge to providers quickly. The Community library includes thousands of vetted guidelines from hundreds of hospitals to use as a resource when developing your own guidelines, so that you can copy and adapt what works from other organizations. We recently spoke with Travis Kremmin, Infectious Disease Clinical Specialist, AdventHealth Kansas City and Jennifer Macmillan, Chair of Antimicrobial Advisory Committee, Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare, to learn more about their experiences using the library and how it has changed their practice.

The One Health initiative is an approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment. To combat antimicrobial resistance, we collectively need to be good stewards of antimicrobials for both human and animal use. Firstline is excited to partner with the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) in our first of several animal health initiatives offering hospital-grade tools to help veterinarians make better prescribing choices. We recently spoke with Dr. Shane Renwick to highlight more about this project.

Effective antimicrobial stewardship interventions need to improve patient outcomes to be deemed successful. The ASP team at Eastern Health recently published a study proving the impact of using the Firstline app to dramatically improve patient outcomes at their hospital. Key findings showed a +10.5% increase in prescribing appropriateness, along with a dramatic savings of $550/bed/year, through reductions in antimicrobial use and C. difficile infections. We recently interviewed the ASP leads at Eastern Health to gain their insights on the findings.

ESBL prediction scores can help get a patient on the most appropriate therapy sooner, even several days before an ESBL has been identified. We recently interviewed Joseph Kohn, Antibiotic Stewardship and Support Team System Coordinator at Prisma Health to learn more about ESBL and gain insights on using an ESBL prediction score in the Firstline app.

The pandemic has shown how easily our knowledge systems and processes can be overwhelmed by the speed and complexity of infectious diseases. To confront this challenge, over the last year we’ve been working to create tools to help foster collaboration in the ID community. We are pleased to announce the beta launch of Firstline Community - a free platform connecting all infectious disease specialists, to share guidelines, learn from each other and spread trusted knowledge. We need each other more than ever.

Antimicrobial Stewardship programs are charged with the mission to improve patient outcomes. We recently spoke with Kyle Massey, Co-Director of the ASP at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, to learn more about how creating a culture for Antimicrobial Stewardship has resulted in significant reduction in DOTs. He shares his insights on how to motivate and educate providers, as well as how to continue to advance an already successful program.

Our service is now used by hundreds of hospital clients around the world. A more distinctive identity is needed to distinguish us as we continue to grow, and extend our clinical guidance capabilities. The name Firstline better supports our role as being the go-to source for delivering your hospital's preferred clinical guidance.

Antimicrobial Stewardship reduces inappropriate antimicrobial use and focuses on improving patient outcomes while combatting antimicrobial resistance. ID/ASP Pharmacist, Mira Maximos, shares different strategies to help your practice improve outcomes and reduce adverse effects associated with antimicrobials.

Insights on antimicrobial stewardship goals around the world, beneficial outcomes of stewardship and great resources to help advance your ASP program.

Antimicrobial Stewardship programs work tirelessly to change prescribing behavior amongst their providers. Sometimes it’s an uphill battle. We spoke with Pediatric ASP team lead, Dr. Nicole Le Saux, to get her insights on how she is able to change prescribing behavior by evolving her guidelines as part of a conversation with her providers.

Introducing our newest tool: Community Content Library. This software helps power your antimicrobial stewardship program and save you time. Community Content allows you to easily browse, copy and adapt guidelines from all the thousands of vetted clinical guidelines housed in Firstline, created by the many hospitals we support.

We recently interviewed Dr. Tiffany Wong and Dr. Chelsea Elwood, both of BC Women's and Children's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada to gain insights on this stewardship challenge and learn more about how they are using Firstline as an intervention tool to address it.

VITT type blood clots are a rare adverse event following administration of COVID-19 vaccines that use the adenoviral vector including the AstraZeneca/COVISHIELD as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

The keys to building a great antimicrobial stewardship program - an interview with Dr. Shaqil Peermohamed.

Currently, there are no specific risk factors, such as age, gender or previous medical history of clotting disorders, identified for the observed rare events. There is still no proven causal link with the vaccine; however, further analysis is ongoing.

Amongst the excitement about the public rollout of these vaccines, an important question is being asked by those looking to be vaccinated: “Which vaccine should I get?”

We are excited to introduce our new blog where we will share up to date evidence, clinical perspectives and best practices in Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Stewardship.