Since June 2011, every bloodstream infection caused by a bacteria called Escherichia coli (E. coli) has to be reported to the UK Health Security Agency. Monthly counts are published regularly, as well as annual reports describing the overall trend, distribution by age and sex, and geographic distribution by NHS trust. Having a system in place which could more regularly monitor the relationships between E. coli bacteraemia and patient characteristics would be useful to identify groups of people who are most at risk.
We plan to use the wealth of information in the IORD dataset to develop a process to regularly monitor both changes in trends in rates of E. coli bacteraemia over time, and population sub-groups who are most at risk. We will explore and compare different methods to find changes in trend in “real-time”. We will also set up a process which regularly looks at lots of patient characteristics and sees which are associated with E. coli bacteraemia. We will investigate whether there are any differences in those who are at highest risk if the infection is acquired in hospital or in the community, as well as how resistant the bacteria causing these infections are to different antibiotics.