Opportunity

Inappropriate use of antibiotics in hospitals can lead to antibiotic resistance, which adversely affects morbidity, mortality, length of stay, and cost. Antibiograms - summaries of antibiotic sensitivity rates that identify a bacterial strain's susceptibility to various antibiotics - are used to inform hospital policy guidelines for treating infections. In 2014, antibiogram generation at Penn Medicine required significant time and effort, with just one report taking several months to create.

Intervention 

ILUM is an antibiogram software that enables health care providers to access real-time interactive data on antibiotic susceptibility and resistance patterns and delivers decision support within the clinician workflow. The software allows providers to monitor the trajectory of infections locally, regionally, within individual health care facilities, and by patient-specific demographics, making it possible to track, prevent, and treat superbug infections more effectively.

Impact 

The historical approach of providing antibiogram data to clinicians every nine to 12 months often made the data obsolete as soon as it was made available. 

By bringing current and local data quickly and directly to prescribers, ILUM has reduced care variations, improved outcomes, limited the spread of antimicrobial resistance, and enabled unit-level surveillance to inform more effective interventions. In short, the software ensures that the right patient gets the right antibiotic at the right time. 

ILUM has been implemented as an antibiotic stewardship solution at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hospital, and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.