The clinical impact of automated susceptibility reporting using a computer interface.

The rapid automated reporting capability of the Vitek-Sunquest interface was shown to have a direct clinical and monetary impact on patient management. The audit performed on autofiled positive culture results at Cooper Hospital/University Medical Center demonstrated an average savings of $243 per day in antimicrobial utilization. A further enhancement in the computer software for the Vitek and Sunquest systems was the development of the Bidirectional Computer Interface (BCI). The BCI upgrade allows the Microbiology laboratory to utilize both the Sunquest and Vitek IMS programs to generate a wide variety of epidemiology reports with a minimum of keyboard entry time.