Automating CLABSI Surveillance Across Swiss Intensive Care Units
Posted
on 13 October 2026
 "Automating CLABSI Surveillance Across Swiss Intensive Care Units")
| Study Overview Monitoring central-line-associated bloodstream infections is essential for identifying trends, comparing performance and guiding infection-prevention efforts. However, traditional surveillance requires substantial manual review and may be difficult to apply consistently across multiple hospitals. This multicentre study evaluated a centrally hosted, fully automated surveillance system for detecting catheter-related bloodstream infections, CLABSI and intensive care unit-onset bloodstream infections across six Swiss hospital networks. The system analysed routinely collected electronic health data from intensive care units between January 2022 and December 2023. Its results were compared with manual review to assess accuracy. Key Findings The analysis included:
For CLABSI and catheter-related bloodstream infection detection, the automated system achieved:
The combined incidence of catheter-related bloodstream infections and CLABSI was 3.23 infections per 1,000 catheter days. The most frequently identified microorganisms included Staphylococcus epidermidis, Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis. Implications The findings show that national, automated CLABSI surveillance is feasible and can produce results comparable with manual surveillance while reducing the ongoing workload required for case review. Using standardised electronic data could support more consistent benchmarking between hospitals, provide faster feedback to infection-prevention teams and make wider participation in national surveillance more achievable. The system did not identify every case, so clinical review and quality checks remain important. However, its strong overall performance supports further integration into national healthcare-associated infection prevention and surveillance programmes. Read more: https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2026.31.18.2500650 Authors: Gaud Catho; Jason Toko; Loïc Fortchantre; Elia Lo Priore; Carlo Balmelli; Lauro Damonti; Philipp Jent; Estelle Moulin; Bruno Grandbastien; Peter W. Schreiber; Sarah Tschudin-Sutter; Jan Adam Roth; Lorenzo Ciullini; Claudine Reiber; Walter Zingg; Alexandra U. Scherrer; Stephan Harbarth; Niccolò Buetti; Swissnoso Working Group |
