Contribution of information technologies to assess and improve professional practice: example of management of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis

Information technologies appear to be interesting tools to assess and improve professional practices. In that setting, the management of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis represents an appropriate clinical area for using and evaluating such a tool. Despite the existence of guidelines in one hand and the demonstrated interest for a strict application of recommendations in the other hand, some irregularities in the management of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis remain in France in 2010. Since we have had computer systems in our department for several years, we performed an evaluation of practice to assess the impact of both the computer-based help and the updating of knowledge in physicians as tools to improve the application of guidelines for surgical antibiotic prophylaxis. Clinical audits. Three clinical audits have therefore been performed before an implementation of computer-based help for clinical decisions and a clinical update for physicians, immediately after, and two years after this combined procedure (2322, 2678 and 2863 patients, respectively). There was an enhancement of clinical practices and compliance to guidelines secondary to the beginning of computer-based prescription (55 to 81%, P