Development of an interactive open source software application (RadaR) for infection management / antimicrobial stewardship

Abstract

ObjectivesAnalysing process and outcome measures for patients suspected of or having an infection in an entire hospital requires processing large datasets and accounting for numerous patient parameters and treatment guidelines. Rapid, reproducible and adaptable analyses usually need substantial technical expertise but can yield valuable insight for infection management and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) teams. We describe a software application (RadaR -Rapid analysis of diagnostic and antimicrobial patterns in R) for infection management allowing user-friendly, intuitive and interactive analysis of large datasets without prior in-depth statistical or software knowledge. Methods and ResultsRadaR was built in R, an open source programming language, making it free to use and adaptable to different settings. Shiny, an additional open source package to implement web-application frameworks in R, was used to develop the application. RadaR was developed in the context of a 1339-bed academic tertiary referral hospital to handle data of more than 180,000 admissions.RadaR visualizes analytical graphs and statistical summaries in an interactive manner within seconds. Users can filter large patient groups by 17 different criteria and investigate antimicrobial use, microbiological diagnostic use and results, and outcome in length of stay.Results can easily be stratified and grouped to compare individually defined patient groups.Finally, datasets of identified patients / groups can be downloaded for further analyses. ConclusionRadaR facilitates understanding and communication of trends in antimicrobial use, diagnostic use and patient outcome by linking and aggregating individual patient data in one user-friendly application. RadaR can produce aggregated data analysis while preserving patients' features in the data to adjust and stratify results in detail. AMS teams can use RadaR to identify areas, both for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, within their institutions that might benefit from increased support and to target their interventions.