Centre for Infection Prevention Management (CIPM)
The Dr Foster Unit has been granted funding by UKCRC to create both an operational database within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and a research database to try and link disparate sources of data on Healthcare Associated Infections within the trust as part of the Centre for Infection Prevention and Management. This work is being carried out at the Charing Cross campus in Hammersmith and involves working closely with colleagues from both Imperial College and Imperial College Healthcare Trust.
Sources of information that could be used for surveillance purposes include electronic administrative records, clinical notes, prescribing of certain drugs, laboratory reporting, GP records and various voluntary and mandatory reporting systems for assessing health care performance. This programme of work will investigate information sources available and examine how data can be best used in surveillance and to help guide patient management. It will explore issues around, patient confidentiality, linkage, validation and use internal databases and other sources such as Hospital Episode Statistics and mortality data and will result in a number of operational tools for surveillance and management of healthcare associated infections.
For the research part of this project, we intend to take pseudynomised data from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust operational infection surveillance database to examine patters of infections within (and outside) the trust.
The aims of the project are:
- To evaluate systems to monitor antibiotic resistance and prescribing practice and facilitate the investigation of antibiotic strategies across primary and acute care
- To build predictive models if possible, based on the data, to assist in the management of patients
- To develop sustainable mechanisms to extend the range, quality and sophistication of current data on infection and risk in the NHS in order to prevent and manage infection
- To establish measurable predictors of readmission for infections including MRSA bacteraemia, surgical site infection (SSI) and C. difficile based on routinely collected information
- To develop surveillance in high-risk populations and develop surveillance schemes across the primary and secondary care interface, including post-discharge surveillance.
Healthcare Associated Infections research
We are collaborating with an infection control consultant within Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, who can provide us with unique access to laboratory diagnoses, and will allow us to compare HES data with their systems of notifications. We are investigating this issue further via a case study comparing HES data and hospital lab records (or report system record) on a patient-by-patient basis. We will investigate all healthcare associated infection ICD codes and look into their readmission rate as well as to use it as a PSI.
