Project: A digital antimicrobial stewardship smartphone application to combat AMR: the AB-assistant

Acronym	AB-assistant (Reference Number: JPIAMR_2017_P005)
Duration	01/02/2018 - 02/01/2022
Project Topic	Antimicrobials are an indispensable part of modern medicine. However, optimal prescription of these agents is becoming increasingly challenging because of the growing complexity of guidelines, and constantly changing epidemiology. Moreover, due to local variations in the prevalence of certain pathogens and antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial choices need to be tailored to local epidemiology. Improvement of antimicrobial use , in particular prevention of overuse of (broadspectrum) antibiotics, through antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs is increasingly regarded as indispensable, both to optimize therapy for the individual patients as well as to reduce emergence of resistance . With the widespread use of electronic health records and handheld electronic devices in hospitals, informatics-based AMS interventions hold great promise as tools to improve antimicrobial prescribing. However, they are still underdeveloped, understudied and underutilized. We propose the development and evaluation of AB-assistant, a smartphone based digital stewardship app that is customizable to local guidelines and therefore has the potential to be used worldwide, including in low- and middleincome countries. AB-assistant will build on the significant experience in the development and implementation of electronic tools for AMS by the partners participating in this proposal. Furthermore, the app will be available for the two most common mobile operating systems: iOS and Android. In this project we propose to 1) develop an AB-assistant app based on the existing Spectrum app (Calgary; www.thespectrumapp.com) with improvements to enhance AMS in large parts of the world 2) test the usability of this app in different countries to determine barriers and facilitators 3) evaluate the AB-assistant in an international, multicentre, randomized clinical trial involving centres in 4 countries in different settings with appropriate antimicrobial use as a primary outcome and 4) use factors identified in this study to facilitate further customization and worldwide implementation of AB-assistant. This unique proposal aims to develop a digital steward for use in different countries worldwide which will increase adherence to prescription guidelines and reduce antimicrobial resistance.
Website	visit project website
Network	JPI AMR
Call	5th Joint Call of JPIAMR

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Erasmus MC University Medical Center	Coordinator	Netherlands
2	Uppsala University	Partner	Sweden
3	University Hospitals Geneva	Partner	Switzerland
4	University of Calgary	Partner	Canada
5	Radboud University Medical Center	Observer	Netherlands
6	University of Medicine and Pharmacy	Observer	Romania
7	Charles University	Observer	Czech Republic
8	Erasmus MC University Medical Center	Observer	Netherlands