Industry Insider News

Study Identifies Successful Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs 

A new study by the Joint Commission identifies the common characteristics behind successful and innovative strategies for antimicrobial stewardship programs in hospital settings. “The Expanding Role of Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs in Hospitals in the United States: Lessons Learned from a Multisite Qualitative Study,” a report led by Shashi N. Kapadia, MD, instructor in medicine and in healthcare policy and research, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, reports on findings from interviews conducted with 12 program leaders heading four prominent stewardship programs in the U.S. The interview questions focused on program implementation, structure, strengths and weaknesses, lessons learned, and future directions. The authors also identified three major themes from the data for successful approaches:

• Evolution from a top-down structure to a more diffuse approach involving unit-based pharmacists, multidisciplinary staff, and shared responsibility for antimicrobial prescribing under the program’s leadership.
• Integration of information technology systems to enable real-time interventions to optimize antimicrobial therapy and patient management.
• Barriers to technology integration including limited resources for data analysis and poor interoperability between software systems.

The publication is available free online and there’s an open invitation for papers on innovative approaches to antimicrobial stewardship in hospitals, nursing care centers, and other settings.

Visit www.jointcommissionjournal.com to read the study. 

Mölnlycke, Tissues Analytics Form Partnership 

Officials at Mölnlycke,^® a global medical solutions company, and Tissue Analytics, a developer of digital wound-imaging platforms based in Baltimore, MD, have announced a strategic partnership that is expected to bring together the two companies’ distinct backgrounds in the development and commercialization of innovative digital solutions for wound care practitioners. Among the innovations anticipated are comprehensive clinical decision support tools intended to simplify and standardize wound assessment and treatment, according to the respective companies.

The two organizations will jointly develop Tissue Analytics’ existing software, adding Mölnlycke’s expertise in wound management while undertaking extensive testing with clinical partners to ensure the best clinical and patient outcomes, officials said. Through partnerships with Epic, Verona, WI; Cerner,^® Kansas City, MO; Allscripts,^TM Chicago, IL; and other electronic health records (EHRs), extracted data can automatically be integrated into Tissue Analytics’ EHR system to allow efficiency and improved workflows, officials said.

Additionally, Mölnlycke has acquired a minority equity interest in Tissue Analytics that further solidifies the underlying strategic partnership, according to officials.  

“By providing healthcare professionals with a combination of high-quality products and advanced tools to allow consistent care delivery, we will not only help them in their daily job, but also improve patient outcomes,” said Richard Twomey, chief executive officer (CEO) at Mölnlycke. “The partnership with Tissue Analytics represents a very exciting opportunity to make this happen.”

“Tissue Analytics is incredibly excited to work with
Mölnlycke on this important initiative,” said Kevin Keenahan, CEO at Tissue Analytics. “We share the same passion to help patients, and with our expertise in digital medicine and their extensive knowledge of wound healing, we can bring powerful, new data analytics capabilities to the market.”

Visit www.molnlycke.com or www.tissue-analytics.com for more information. 

Organizations Launch Vascular Registry

Officials with the Society for Vascular Ultrasound (SVU),
Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), and Medstreaming-M2S, a software company based in Redmond, WA, have announced the development of the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) Vascular Ultrasound Registry. According to SVU and SVS officials, the registry represents an expansion of the SVS  VQI, which will combine noninvasive (vascular ultrasound) testing data with vascular treatment and outcomes data, making it possible to analyze the relationships between diagnosis and care provided to patients living with vascular disease.

The registry’s initial efforts will reportedly focus on collection and analysis of data associated with the diagnosis and treatment of carotid artery disease. The development of the registry and ongoing research-related activities are being led by a VQI task force. Groundbreaking in this registry will be the inclusion of actual ultrasound images that will make future machine analysis and learning possible from the collected registry, which currently does not exist, officials said. It is also anticipated that the registry will provide the means and an impetus to promote vascular laboratory standardization, and thereby improve patient care. 

“Noninvasive vascular testing has evolved to the point where it is being relied upon heavily to direct patient medical management decisions,” said James Wilkinson, SVU executive director, in a prepared statement. “With the rapid growth and diversification in the number of medical specialties providing testing, there is a lack of standardization in the delivery of testing and the reporting of results. Targeted yet broad-based research will significantly contribute to standardization efforts.”

Fundamental to the VQI Vascular Ultrasound Registry is the ability to link technical data and images to the clinical data collected from the SVS VQI’s existing registries, officials said, adding that the new registry leverages the infrastructure of the preexisting registry with linkages to ultrasound images from the vascular laboratory. Ultimately, the registry will provide an opportunity for VQI members to improve quality and conduct additional research regarding vascular ultrasound, according to officials. Visit www.vqi.org for more information.