Project Snapshot

The overall antibiotic resistance rate of bacterial pathogens isolated from human specimens in Alberta is currently unknown. Antimicrobial susceptibility data is collected for individual hospitals and health regions; however, this data is not collated to provide an overall antibiotic resistance rate for any one organism. This project’s aim will be to provide this information for Alberta.

Understanding the antibiotic resistance rates of bacterial pathogens is critical information for clinicians treating patients. While antibiograms (i.e. antimicrobial susceptibility profiles for individual bacterial pathogens) exist in Alberta there is no one overarching antibiogram for the province as a whole. The work funded here will target the development of a provincial antibiogram in Alberta.

1. What are the provincial antibiotic resistance rates for the commonly encountered human bacterial pathogens?
2. Are antibiotic resistance rates the same or similar across Alberta, or are there locations where these rates substantially differ? 
3. If rates do differ, why?

There are two routes that will be explored:

1. The first will be a collaboration with Alberta Health Services Tableau. Alberta Health Services hosts a number of Tableau dashboards which are created to automatically pull in data from across Alberta onto a single server. This data is automatically collated in either a tabular or  graphical output, and can be displayed publically.
2. Should this prove to be unsuccessful, antibiogram data will be manually collated from the current antibiograms available from the clinical microbiology laboratories in Alberta that generate antimicrobial susceptibility data.