The NHS are rolling out electronic prescribing in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper reports that;

“Health chiefs have drawn up the plans amid warnings that antibiotic resistance now poses as great a threat as climate change.”

Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care UK will be informing attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos that “we are on the cusp of a world where a simple graze could be deadly”. He has stated that it needs to be treated as a “global health emergency” and wants to cut the use of drugs across the country by 15% by setting targets.

The head of the NHS Mr Simon Stevens, said that; “much of the change would be achieved by the rollout electronic prescribing across the health service.” This would allow health officials to detect areas that are prescribing the most antibiotics so that they can try and persuade medics to cut down.

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “The increase in antibiotic resistance is a threat we cannot afford to ignore.

“Government data shows that, since 2014, the UK has cut the amount of antibiotics it uses by more than 7 per cent and sales of antibiotics for use in food-producing animals has dropped by 40 per cent.”

The NHS antimicrobial resistance (AMR) report 2015 stated:

“The amount of antimicrobials used in food production internationally is at least the same as that in humans, and in some places is higher. For example, in the US more than 70% of antibiotics that are medically important for humans are used in animals.

“When properly used, antibiotics are essential for treating infections in animals, but excessive and inappropriate use of the drugs is a problem.

A considerable amount of antibiotics are used in healthy animals to prevent infection or speed up their growth. This is particularly the case in intensive farming, where animals are kept in confined conditions.”

In order to help the fight against AMR Randox Food Diagnostics are constantly researching and developing new ways to screen for antibiotics across wine, honey, meat, seafood, dairy, feed and cereals.

Randox Food Diagnostics have developed Biochip Array Technology a multiplexing platform which allows the screening of up to 54 food/feed samples for a large range of antibiotics in under 3 hours on the Randox Evidence Investigator analyser.

To find out more information on how Biochip Array Technology works visit our website at: www.randoxfood.com

Or contact us directly at: info@randoxfooddiagnostics.com