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WHONET and BacLink: Software Tools for Laboratory-Based Surveillance of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance

Description

Clinical and public health microbiology laboratories of the world are a rich, underutilized resource in monitoring the changing epidemiology of microbial populations worldwide. Two areas of public health importance in which effective use of relevant local data are critical include: 1. guiding local treatment guidelines, informed by knowledge of local patterns of infection and antimicrobial resistance; and 2. the early identification and characterization of outbreaks.

Most laboratories in the developed world and many in the developing world have clinical databases designed to meet the day-to-day needs of clinical reporting, specimen processing, billing, and permanent information storage. Unfortunately, most such systems were not developed with the epidemiological needs of microbiologists, infection control staff, public health authorities, and policy-makers in mind. To address this critical gap, our group at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance has developed the WHONET and BacLink softwares to support local, national, and international infectious disease surveillance programs.

 

Objective

This paper describes two free softwares developed for the automated and semi-automated capture, processing, and analysis of microbiology laboratory data. Applications include early detection of hospital and community outbreaks, guiding local treatment guidelines and public health policy, and immediate alert of important pathogens and potential errors in laboratory testing.

Submitted by elamb on