The NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory is excited to welcome the INSPIRE NIH Collaboratory Trial to its portfolio of innovative, large-scale pragmatic clinical trials embedded in healthcare systems.
INSPIRE (or Intelligent Stewardship Prompts to Improve Real-Time Empiric Antibiotic Selection for Patients) will implement the INSPIRE-ASP Trials for Abdominal and Skin and Soft Tissue Infections. These 2 cluster randomized trials will study the effectiveness of a personalized clinical decision support program in improving antibiotic prescribing for non–critically ill patients who are hospitalized with abdominal infections or skin and soft tissue infections.
Although fewer than 5% of such patients have an antibiotic-resistant infection, more than half receive extended-spectrum antibiotics. Tools to support clinicians in judicious antibiotic prescribing are needed to curb the urgent public health threat of antibiotic resistance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year in the United States alone, and more than 35,000 people die as a result.
Dr. Shruti Gohil will serve as INSPIRE’s lead investigator. Gohil is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine, and associate medical director of epidemiology and infection prevention at UCI Health. Dr. Susan Huang, professor of medicine at UC Irvine, and Dr. Richard Platt, professor and chair of population medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, are the co–principal investigators for the project.
The INSPIRE NIH Collaboratory Trial is supported within the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory by a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Huang and Platt are experienced investigators in the NIH Collaboratory. Huang was principal investigator of the ABATE Infection NIH Collaboratory Trial. Platt is a member of the program’s Coordinating Center leadership and cochair of the Distributed Research Network.