Improving our use of existing antimicrobial resistance data and generating better data on optimal antibiotic duration by improving trial design in veterinary and human medicine (ID Epi Seminar Series)

Presented by Dr. Koen Pouwels, Senior Health Economist at Oxford University’s Health Economics Research Centre. Register for the event here.

Dr Koen Pouwels is a health economist at the University of Oxford. His current work focuses on SARS-CoV-2 and antimicrobial resistance modelling, spatiotemporal modelling to predict local antimicrobial resistance and SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalences based on non-random survey data, design of randomised trials to determine optimal duration of antibiotic therapy, economic evaluation of antibiotic-resistance related interventions, and development of statistical approaches to better quantify the impact of resistant infections on health and economic outcomes. His work has informed national COVID-19 mitigation strategies as well as national targets for antibiotic prescribing in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining the University of Oxford in 2019, Koen worked at Public Health England on various projects related to antibiotic usage and antimicrobial resistance.

Recommended readings:

• Pouwels KB, Yin M, Butler CC, Cooper BS, Wordsworth S, Walker AS, Robotham JV. Optimising trial designs to identify appropriate antibiotic treatment durations. BMC Med. 2019 Jun 21;17(1):115. doi: 10.1186/s12916-019-1348-z. PMID: 31221165; PMCID: PMC6587258.
• Jit M, Ng DHL, Luangasanatip N, Sandmann F, Atkins KE, Robotham JV, Pouwels KB. Quantifying the economic cost of antibiotic resistance and the impact of related interventions: rapid methodological review, conceptual framework and recommendations for future studies. BMC Med. 2020 Mar 6;18(1):38. doi: 10.1186/s12916-020-1507-2. PMID: 32138748; PMCID: PMC7059710.
• Pouwels KB, Vansteelandt S, Batra R, Edgeworth J, Wordsworth S, Robotham JV; Improving the uptake and SusTainability of Effective interventions to promote Prudent antibiotic Use and Primary care (STEP-UP) Team. Estimating the Effect of Healthcare-Associated Infections on Excess Length of Hospital Stay Using Inverse Probability-Weighted Survival Curves. Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Dec 3;71(9):e415-e420. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa136. PMID: 32047916; PMCID: PMC7713691.