Comparing antibiotics prescribing practices for humans and pets
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Comparing the antibiotics prescribing practices in human and small animal health: a “One Health Informatics“ aproach
IRAS ID
195467
Contact name
Neil French
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
There are concerns that the use of antibiotics in animals may be contributing to resistance in humans. It is important to know how widely antibiotics are being used across both human and animal health, as their overuse and incorrect use are major drivers for the spread of antibiotic resistance. What focus on this topic there is, has been on the use of antibiotics in agricultural practice and antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria entering the human food chain. However, more intimate domestic contact with companion animals has not been investigated as a route of zoonotic AMR transmission. This project will compare prescribing behaviour in companion animals and human healthcare settings by collecting electronic health records (EHRs) from medical and veterinary practitioners in the Liverpool Local Authority.
Medical data will come from general medical practices in Liverpool Local Authority, facilitated by NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group. General practitioners surgeries gather EHRs, which include patient information such as sex, age, residence, consultation coding, date of consultation and date of prescribing and treatments prescribed. Veterinary data will come from SAVSNET, the Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network, which captures EHRs in real-time from UK veterinary practices including animal signalment (i.e. species, sex, age, etc.), narrative notes, owner’s post-code and treatments including antibiotics.
The overall aim of this project is, through medical and veterinary sentinel networks of practitioners in the Liverpool Local Authority, to explore a novel “One Health Informatics” approach for comparing the antibiotics prescribing practices in human and small animals healthcare settings over space and time through the use of their EHRs. In addition, a novel tool for integrating datasources contributed to by both human and veterinary healthcare will be developed here which could be applied in the future to understand and mitigate zoonotic infections of relevant priority for HPRU-EZI.REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 1
REC reference
16/NS/0028
Date of REC Opinion
11 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion