TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: COLLABORATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF NOVEL DATA ANALYTICS FOR RAPID OUTBREAK DETECTION IN A LARGE VICTORIAN HEALTHCARE FACILITY

Ms Denise Del Rosario-Kelly¹, Mr Philip Rawson-Harris¹, Ms Megan Gritt¹, Ms Shirley Leong¹, Mr Joseph  Post¹, Ms Pauline  Bass¹, Dr Andrew Stewardson¹

¹Alfred Health, Melbourne, Australia

Background: Contact tracing for patients with multi-resistant organisms (MROs), particularly carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE), has been labour-intensive and inefficient for our infection prevention and control team (IPCT) because it involves information stored across siloed, disparate systems. We therefore sought to develop a tool to facilitate efficient data integration and analysis.

Method: Collaboration between the Infectious Diseases Data Team (IDDT) and IPCT saw the production of a live, interactive Gantt chart program based in the R programming language, which provided a visual representation of potential CPE transmission events. Filterable features included case details, dates of positive isolates, dates of negative isolates and admissions data. It also displayed the time-period that a patient spent in each ward, and any overlap with other known cases in the same location. Information was uploaded from existing electronic clinical data sources.

Results: Collaborating and implementing a novel R realisation of the Gantt chart has aided the IPCT to rapidly uncover relationships and transmission events within massive data sets. This has decreased the burden and errors of data collection and analyses, and provided the ability to track events longitudinally over a spectrum of patient admissions in a timely manner.

Conclusion: Collaboration with the IDDT has increased the efficiency of the IPCT. The program developed can help the IPCT analyse the patterns and incidences of other MROs, and ensure that our health service is well equipped to implement immediate measures to control the spread of MROs in a complex environment.

Biography:

Denise is an Infection Prevention Nurse Consultant at Alfred Health. She has postgraduate qualifications in neuroscience nursing and infection control nursing. Away from work, Denise is an avid fan of the arts and has a great love of animals, including her rescue greyhound, Slipper.

Philip heads the epidemiology and data management service at Alfred Health for Infectious Diseases. He has a background in pharmaceuticals and clinical trials, and a Masters in Control of Infectious Diseases. He has an interest in improving health through data visualisation and audit. Outside work, he enjoys playing rugby and pretending to learn German.