Clinical Trial by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, HCA Healthcare, UCI Health and CDC Identifies Strategy to Rapidly Detect and Respond to Hospital Outbreaks Using Algorithm-Driven Technology - Seite 2

“Outbreaks in hospitals are often missed or detected late, after preventable infections have occurred. This study provides a practical and standardized approach to identify early transmission and halt events that could become an outbreak in hospitals,” said lead investigator, Meghan A. Baker, MD, ScD, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.

The automated outbreak detection method was tested from 2019-2022 in a randomized clinical trial in 82 hospitals across 16 states in the HCA Healthcare system, a leader in real-world evidence-based research. Half of the hospitals implemented the automated early detection method, and the other half continued with usual care. Hospitals that were assigned to receive and respond to the automated alerts experienced a 64% reduction in the size of potential outbreaks until the trial was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, personnel were not able to respond as effectively to automated alerts, and across the combined pre-pandemic and pandemic trial period, there was no overall effect. Nevertheless, in analyses restricted to the pre-pandemic period, the outbreak detection tool was associated with a demonstrable and significant reduction in cases. While the actual risks of an outbreak are low, even one outbreak can be significant. The automated system notified hospitals about possible events approximately three times per year per hospital so early preventative responses could be taken to maximize patient safety.

“This ongoing collaboration continues to leverage our scale – both the number of our hospitals and our advanced data ecosystem – as we work to rapidly answer clinical questions that benefit patients everywhere,” said Kenneth Sands, MD, MPH, chief epidemiologist at HCA Healthcare. “We are using this detection tool in the hospitals where we tested it and are evaluating implementation more widely across our system.”

The underlying software is available for free to all hospital systems but must be integrated into their respective electronic health record system or other clinical workflow platforms.

The study was funded by CDC and conducted through a longstanding scientific consortium, including HCA Healthcare, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute's Department of Population Medicine, the University of California, Irvine and the CDC’s Prevention Epicenters Program. It is part of a growing body of work by the partners to improve patient care and reduce risk of healthcare-associated infections.