Infectious disease surveillance in Dutch hospitals: What's in it for us?

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the need for multipurpose and sustainable hospital surveillance data. We studied the barriers, facilitators, and preferred requirements for an infectious disease surveillance system in Dutch hospitals to be valuable and feasible from a hospital perspective.

METHODS

This study is part of a larger EU4Health Project, UNITED4Surveillance. Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders were conducted, and were subsequently analyzed using a thematic analytic approach.

RESULTS

Participants discussed surveillance systems for antimicrobial resistance, healthcare-associated infections, and severe acute respiratory infections. Perceived barriers to establishing or maintaining such systems included unclear and/or passive hospital roles, legal challenges, and insufficient resources and capacity. Perceived facilitators included clinically relevant and actionable data, mutually beneficial collaborations between stakeholders, and sufficient support at multiple decision-making levels and across legal, technical, capacity, and financial domains.

CONCLUSIONS

This qualitative research provides new insights into the barriers and facilitators in infectious disease surveillance in Dutch hospitals from the hospital perspective since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Key stakeholders outlined practical recommendations to improve robust and sustainable infectious disease surveillance in Dutch hospitals: (i) ensure clinically relevant actionable data; (ii) clarify roles and responsibilities; and (iii) collaborate on innovative initiatives.