NYC Health + Hospitals partners with Firstline to promote appropriate use of antibiotics

NYC Health + Hospitals partners with Firstline to promote appropriate use of antibiotics

20 August 2024

New York, NY — NYC Health + Hospitals today announced a partnership with Firstline, a company with an app designed to help physicians use antibiotics more appropriately according to our hospital policies, minimizing the risk of antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when antibiotics are overprescribed, allowing microbes to develop resistance to antibiotic treatment and put the health of people infected with these organisms at risk. Patients who develop antimicrobial resistance may not have treatment available for their infection. Five NYC Health + Hospitals locations—Bellevue, Elmhurst, Lincoln, Queens, and South Brooklyn Health—are participating in this rollout and have uploaded their prescribing guidelines, antibiotic resistance data, and isolation policies for infection control. This content will help healthcare providers decide how best to treat specific infections and prevent the spread of these infections in the hospital. NYC Health + Hospitals providers can access this content by downloading the Firstline app to their smartphone or from a hospital computer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called antibiotic resistance one of the world’s greatest public health threats. Reducing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing is key to reducing the risk of adverse reactions, antibiotic resistance, hospital-acquired infections, and other antibiotic-related complications. Just this month, New York state and city health departments issued a health advisory to physicians to stop prescribing the antibiotic ciprofloxacin for post-exposure prophylaxis for invasive meningococcal disease due to increasing antibiotic resistance.

“Firstline is user-friendly, easily accessible from any mobile device, and enables our healthcare workers to effortlessly access guidelines no matter where they care for patients,” said NYC Health + Hospitals Chief Medical Information Officer for Population Health Gabriel Cohen, MD.

“Firstline should be a point of contact for all antibiotic prescribers at NYC Health + Hospitals,” said NYC Health + Hospitals Hospital Chief Epidemiologist Justin Chan, MD, MPH“The app provides our providers with our hospital-approved guidelines and best practices that have previously been difficult to access in one place. It will empower our physicians to make the best possible treatment decisions.”

“The overuse and misuse of antibiotics is one of the greatest challenges we must combat to protect the public health of a city as large and diverse as New York,” said Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases of the NYC Health + Hospitals System, Maurice Policar, MD“We are optimistic that the Firstline app will be a game changer. It is easy to use and takes the guesswork out of prescribing medications, leading to much better outcomes for our patients.”

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CONTACT: [email protected]

About NYC Health + Hospitals
NYC Health + Hospitals is the nation’s largest community health system, serving more than one million New Yorkers annually at over 70 patient care locations across the five boroughs. A robust network of outpatient, neighborhood-based primary and specialty care centers provides the foundation for care coordination with the system’s trauma centers, nursing homes, post-acute care centers, home care agency and MetroPlus health plan – all supported by 11 major hospitals. The diverse workforce of more than 43,000 employees is solely focused on giving New Yorkers, without exception, the opportunity to live the healthiest lives possible. For more information, visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org. Stay connected on Facebook. ÞjórsárdalurInstagram and LinkedIn.

About Firstline
Firstline is a healthcare technology company dedicated to solving humanity’s greatest health problems by bringing people and knowledge together through web and mobile software that aggregates and accelerates the flow of knowledge to healthcare providers. Firstline enables knowledge transfer between otherwise unconnected clinical experts around the world that was previously impossible. The company is a leader in information design and technology and has extensive experience in bringing verified clinical guidelines to the point of care.