Hospira (HSP), a provider of injectable drugs and infusion technologies, has revamped its TheraDoc clinical surveillance system, which is designed to support hospital antimicrobial stewardship efforts.

The new TheraDoc system version 4.5 is intended to help hospitals improve patient outcomes, reduce antimicrobial resistant infections and reduce costs.

It includes features that can assist pharmacists and infection preventionists in maximizing the benefits of clinical surveillance throughout their organizations, in addition to automating the monitoring and reporting of infections and antibiotic use.

Hospira vice president of Clinical Information Technology France Pitera said the upgraded TheraDoc system helps hospitals leverage patient data to improve antibiotic use, combat antimicrobial resistance.

"The software upgrade also helps hospitals improve antimicrobial utilization reporting – a result of TheraDoc’s early work with the CDC on its Antimicrobial Usage Reporting project," Pitera added.

The enhanced version features a new electronic medication administration record (eMAR) interface that integrates medical administration records into the TheraDoc system.

This enables hospitals to monitor antimicrobial utilization using days of therapy or defined daily dose and export this data to the NHSN.

The eMAR interface also helps infection preventionists improve patient care by simplifying the process of isolation management.

Other upgrades include an antimicrobial usage dashboard, antimicrobial alerts, and upgraded NHSN definitions that are designed to increase the efficiency and accuracy of NHSN reporting.

St. Luke’s Hospital, Warren Campus in New Jersey infection preventionist Lori McSorley said before TheraDoc, it would take 10-15 minutes per patient to collect and review surgical site infection data before in putting it into the NHSN system

"Now, information on all of our surgeries, including the start and stop time, class of surgery, and patient ASA [physical status] score, can be obtained automatically through the TheraDoc system," McSorley added.