Ambulatory Care (AC)

• Collecting usage data from ambulatory care (primary care in the UK)
• Where possible, stratifying data by age, gender and indication, and assessing how this information explains differences in antibiotic use in ambulatory care
• Investigating relationships between national resistance data and the recommendations of national evidence-based clinical guidelines
• Developing indicators to assess the quality of antibiotic use in ambulatory care
• Assessment of impact of interventions to alter prescribing in the community

Hospital Care (HC)

• Developing web-based antibiotic point prevalence (Web-PPS) methodology, and conducting Europe-wide studies
• Collecting hospital usage data, with some information regarding e.g. the size and type of institution to facilitate comparisons
• Developing indicators to assess the quality of antibiotic use in hospitals

Nursing Homes (NH)

• Using Web-PPS methodology to evaluate antimicrobial prescribing in nursing homes
• Evaluating the factors influencing antimicrobial use at institutional and individual levels e.g. level of care required, relative availability of antibiotics etc

Socio-economic determinants (EC)

• Investigating socio-economic, demographic and organisational determinants of antimicrobial consumption e.g. relationships between antimicrobial use and local burden of disease, public knowledge about antibiotics, or differences in health care systems (e.g. non-prescription availability of antimicrobials).

Further information can be obtained from the UK Coordinator, Hayley Wickens