Diagnostic Stewardship: Appropriate Testing Leads to Efficient Diagnosis, Timely Therapy
This type of stewardship is a means of reducing unnecessary testing, getting the appropriate diagnosis more efficiently, and getting patients the appropriate therapy in a timely manner.
Diagnostic stewardship is defined as the appropriate use of laboratory testing to guide patient management, including treatment, in order to optimize clinical outcomes and limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance.1
In part, this collaboration allows for laboratory professionals and clinicians to work together to identify the right technologies to enable efficient diagnosis and begin the appropriate treatment for patients. The emergence of rapid testing diagnostics is a means to enable this stewardship.
Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVP, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy, has been involved in research looking at ways to increase diagnostic stewardship and the importance associated in clinical care with this initiative. According to Abdul-Mutakabbir, behind diagnostic stewardship is understanding what are the most valuable diagnostics for individual medical centers and hospitals to have and also having key stakeholders serving as champions for this type of stewardship within these institutions to identify these diagnostics and aid in other aspects such as reading results and acting upon them.
Contagion spoke with Abdul-Mutakabbir about some of her diagnostic stewardship research, specific technologies associated with it, and her insights on some of her presentations that will appear at this year’s IDWeek.
References
1. Patel R, Fang FC. Diagnostic Stewardship: Opportunity for a Laboratory-Infectious Diseases Partnership. Clin Infect Dis. 2018 Aug 16;67(5):799-801. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciy077. PMID: 29547995; PMCID: PMC6093996.
