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. 2022 Jul 13;6(7):e31650.
doi: 10.2196/31650.

A Privacy-Preserving Audit and Feedback System for the Antibiotic Prescribing of General Practitioners: Survey Study

Kassaye Yitbarek Yigzaw  1 , Taridzo Chomutare  1 , Rolf Wynn  2   3 , Gro Karine Rosvold Berntsen  1   4 , Johan Gustav Bellika  1   2
Affiliations

A Privacy-Preserving Audit and Feedback System for the Antibiotic Prescribing of General Practitioners: Survey Study

Kassaye Yitbarek Yigzaw et al. JMIR Form Res. .

Abstract

Background: Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide public health problem that is accelerated by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics. Studies have shown that audits and feedback enable clinicians to compare their personal clinical performance with that of their peers and are effective in reducing the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics. However, privacy concerns make audits and feedback hard to implement in clinical settings. To solve this problem, we developed a privacy-preserving audit and feedback (A&F) system.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate a privacy-preserving A&F system in clinical settings.

Methods: A privacy-preserving A&F system was deployed at three primary care practices in Norway to generate feedback for 20 general practitioners (GPs) on their prescribing of antibiotics for selected respiratory tract infections. The GPs were asked to participate in a survey shortly after using the system.

Results: A total of 14 GPs responded to the questionnaire, representing a 70% (14/20) response rate. The participants were generally satisfied with the usefulness of the feedback and the comparisons with peers, as well as the protection of privacy. The majority of the GPs (9/14, 64%) valued the protection of their own privacy as well as that of their patients.

Conclusions: The system overcomes important privacy and scaling challenges that are commonly associated with the secondary use of electronic health record data and has the potential to improve antibiotic prescribing behavior; however, further study is required to assess its actual effect.

Keywords: antibiotics; antimicrobial stewardship; clinical setting; electronic health record; feedback; learning health care system; patient privacy; prescription; privacy; quality improvement.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Antibiotic prescribing for all participating general practitioners between 2015 and 2018.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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