TAPPING THE POWER OF
SPECTRUM Dr. Shaqil Peermohamed is using a cellphone app to disseminate information on the antimicrobial stewardship program to the province’s physicians
By Girard Hengen
Innovative physicians like Saskatoon’s Dr. Shaqil Peermohamed are tapping into the potential of the ubiquitous cellphone to improve patient care in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Dr. Peermohamed is the physician lead of the antimicrobial stewardship program in Saskatoon. When he started in his position in 2016, he and the program’s pharmacy lead, Justin Kosar, were a small operation with big plans. One of the biggest challenges they faced was how to get the latest information on managing infections – tailored with local antibiotic resistance patterns – to physicians across Saskatchewan to prevent unnecessary or inappropriate usage. “With our program’s limited resources, we needed an innovative medium to effectively generate and disseminate current, evidence-based information for health-care professionals,” Dr. Peermohamed told the SMA. Traditionally, physicians have used pre-printed order sets or paper pocket guides that specified – in print – which tests to order or which antibiotics to use for various infections. “The concern with using pre-printed order sets in health care is this concept of muda, which is a Japanese word for
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waste in terms of quality of care,” said Dr. Peermohamed. “If we see a change in local antibiotic resistance patterns in our hospital or community, we need to be able to quickly adapt and adjust our antibiotic recommendations to our physicians and pharmacists. With pre-printed order sets, how do you quickly make a new order set, how do you get rid of the old one, and how do you ensure that no one is referring to that old one anymore? “That’s where the power of technology lies – because if we use an app and can ensure that the information is updated automatically, we can eliminate muda and we can ensure that clinicians have evidence-based information that’s up to date based upon local resistance patterns. This could essentially change prescribing patterns in Saskatchewan to help physicians and pharmacists make the best decision for their patients.” Spectrum is an app developed by two medical residents in Calgary who worked with software developers and teams from the University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services. Spectrum can be customized to provide local antimicrobial stewardship resources in any hospital. It can be used at the point of contact with patients, giving physicians evidencebased guidelines, antimicrobial information that incorporates local resistance patterns and updated antimicrobial formulary content.
