News
Antibiotic Defined Daily Dose (DDD) Report Now Available on Asolva’s Medici
November 16, 2009Los Angeles, CA – Asolva (www.asolva.com) announced today that its flagship pharmacy clinical intervention software system, Medici, now allows clinicians to produce a monthly Defined Daily Dose (DDD) report. DDDs are a World Health Organization (WHO) standardized statistical measure of drug consumption allowing comparisons of antimicrobial use by different healthcare organizations across countries and international regions.
“The availability of a DDD report allows clinicians to quickly compare the utilization and dosing practices of antibiotics, regardless of the type or dosing mechanism. If it appears that the antimicrobials are being used inappropriately in a particular department or population, clinicians can implement a strategy to help improve prescribing behavior,” said Chun Wong, chief executive officer, Asolva.
DDD reports enable trend analysis using internationally recognized standards. Each drug is assigned a DDD number by the WHO analogous to one day’s worth of medication. DDDs can "equalize" daily doses of antibiotics which are given in different quantities. For example, 13.5 grams of piperacillin/tazobactam is 1 DDD as is 0.5 grams of intravenous levofloxacin.
Medici uses a powerful query engine to data-mine pharmacy records from a hospital’s information system, tabulating a DDD report for all antibiotic usage throughout wards, hospitals or multi-site systems. The monthly DDD retrospective provides insight into an organization’s prescribing practices and can compare different pharmacists or hospitals.
As a clinical pharmacy tool, Medici’s automated surveillance software eliminates the need for hunting through paper or electronic records to identify and report on patient information, antibiotic utilization and drug administration. Equipped with a variety of customizable templates, Medici is cost effective for smaller hospitals and can be scaled up to cover multiple hospitals and millions of patient records. The system interfaces with all major EMR and clinical laboratory systems and can provide a wide variety of reports to help meet Joint Commission and Medicare reporting requirements.