
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Looke, David 
A1  - Morton, Anthony 
T1  - Monitoring antibiotic usage: an update
JF  - Healthcare Infection
JO  - Healthcare Infection
Y1  - 2007
VL  - 12
IS  - 4
SP  - 127
EP  - 129
KW  - 
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1071/HI07127 
N2  - Within a hospital, antibiotic usage can be affected by clustering of infections. In addition, pharmacy imprest systems may deliver stock in one time period that are used in a subsequent time period. As a result, hospital antibiotic usage data can be unpredictable and highly variable. Usage of an antibiotic can be conveniently displayed in a time-series chart with monthly defined daily doses (DDDs) per 1000 bed-days on the vertical axis and months on the horizontal axis. To account for random variation, the chart should ideally have control limits, for example a Shewhart chart. However, conventional Shewhart control charts rely on the availability of a run of predictable data values so that the average and its variability can be determined. Since this may be difficult to achieve with hospital antibiotic usage data, a conventional control chart may give misleading information. A modified control chart based on a generalised additive model can overcome the difficulty in the analysis of these data. This chart is not difficult to employ or interpret. 
ER  -

