Use Case RISK PRINCIPE

From a medical perspective, nosocomial, or hospital-acquired, infections are one of the greatest medical burdens in high-income countries. In Germany, these infections are associated with an estimated 16,000 deaths per year. Prevention of these infections is one of the most important issues in patient safety. In addition to the negative consequences that nosocomial infections have for individual patients, these infections also lead to higher healthcare expenditures. Often, the infections are treated with antibiotics, which in turn can contribute to antimicrobial resistance, especially if their use is poorly targeted.

A multidisciplinary approach to infection prevention is therefore required to contain nosocomial infections. Surveillance, the accurate documentation and monitoring of infections, is one of the key components of prevention in individual hospitals. Based on the information obtained, healthcare professionals and policy makers can identify areas at risk and initiate targeted interventions.

However, current survey and prevention measures are overly resource-intensive (time, staff), universal rather than individually risk-adapted, and usually limited to specific wards and patient populations. Therefore, identifying the best possible combination is a requirement: Reduction of infection risk as well as optimal distribution of resources.

RISK PRINCIPE can improve the quality of patient care by helping to identify high-risk areas and patients, reducing the time required for surveillance and increasing responsiveness.

This will be tested using hospital onset bacteremia (HOBs) as an example. To achieve this goal, different data sources will be evaluated to create a risk profile, which will then be tested.