Beyond recording individual antimicrobial treatments, Kora provides analytical tools transforming treatment data into actionable insights. Usage pattern analysis reveals which antimicrobials you use most frequently and why. Effectiveness monitoring identifies treatments that work well and those indicating resistance issues. Cost tracking supports resource allocation and budgeting decisions. Trend analysis highlights changes over time warranting investigation. These insights support continuous improvement in antimicrobial stewardship, animal health management, and operational efficiency.

This chapter explains how to use Kora's analytical and reporting features to gain insights from antimicrobial use data. Communicate stewardship practices to stakeholders.

Understanding Your Treatment Patterns

Most Frequently Used Antimicrobials

Kora identifies which antimicrobial products and active ingredients you use most often. This analysis helps understand treatment preferences. Identifies improvement opportunities.

High-Frequency Products: Products used repeatedly warrant evaluation. Are they effective? Are they appropriate choices? Could better preventive health reduce need for these treatments? Are there more economical or narrow-spectrum alternatives?

Product Diversity: Using many different antimicrobials might indicate good stewardship (choosing specific products for specific conditions) or might suggest inconsistent practices. Context matters. Veterinary operations serving diverse clients naturally use more products than specialised livestock operations.

Active Ingredient Patterns: Grouping by active ingredient rather than brand name reveals whether you're using different formulations of same antimicrobial or truly different medications. Helps identify overreliance on specific antimicrobial families.

Usage by Antimicrobial Family

Antimicrobials are grouped into families based on chemical structure and mechanism of action: Penicillins (beta-lactam antibiotics), Cephalosporins (beta-lactam antibiotics), Macrolides, Tetracyclines, Fluoroquinolones, Aminoglycosides, Sulfonamides, Others (lincosamides, phenicols, polymyxins, glycopeptides).

Understanding usage by family helps identify: overreliance on specific families (repeated use increases resistance risk), appropriate family selection (different families suit different infections), reserve antimicrobial use (fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins often reserved for resistant infections), rotation opportunities (varying antimicrobial families can reduce resistance development).

Usage by Clinical Indication

Analysing which conditions require antimicrobial treatment most frequently reveals:

Common Health Challenges: Conditions requiring frequent antimicrobial treatment may indicate preventable health problems. Repeated respiratory infections, mastitis, or foot infections suggest opportunities for improved prevention. Better management, nutrition, housing, or biosecurity.

Condition-Specific Patterns: Understanding which antimicrobials are used for which conditions helps evaluate appropriateness. Are you using narrow-spectrum first-line choices, or immediately reaching for broad-spectrum products? Are choices consistent with veterinary recommendations and diagnostic findings?

Seasonal Patterns: Some conditions show seasonal variation. Understanding these patterns supports proactive prevention during high-risk periods.

Treatment Type Distribution

Kora categorises antimicrobial use by purpose: Therapeutic Use (treating diagnosed infections in sick animals, should constitute majority of use, represents appropriate stewardship), Metaphylactic Use (treating apparently healthy animals in groups where some are sick, requires careful justification and veterinary oversight), Prophylactic Use (preventing infection before it occurs, should be limited and carefully justified), Growth Promotion Use (using antimicrobials to enhance growth, illegal or heavily restricted in many jurisdictions due to resistance concerns).

High proportions of preventive use (metaphylactic or prophylactic) may indicate overuse. Warrant review of underlying health management practices.

Monitoring Treatment Effectiveness

Treatment Outcome Tracking

Recording treatment outcomes provides essential feedback:

Successful Outcomes: Treatments where animals recovered fully without modification. High success rates indicate appropriate antimicrobial selection, correct dosing, effective treatment protocols.

Partial Response: Treatments providing some improvement but incomplete resolution. May indicate sub-optimal antimicrobial choice, inadequate duration, or concurrent health issues.

Failed Treatments: Treatments providing no improvement or resulting in worsening condition. Treatment failures warrant investigation for resistance, misdiagnosis, or inappropriate product selection.

Outcome Trends: Tracking outcomes over time reveals whether treatments are becoming less effective. Might indicate developing resistance or changing pathogen patterns.

Treatment Modification Tracking

How often do treatments need to be modified? Switched to different antimicrobials, dose adjusted, or duration extended?

Low Modification Rates: Most treatments working as initially prescribed indicates good stewardship and effective treatment selection.

High Modification Rates: Frequent modifications suggest inadequate diagnostic support before treatment, resistance to first-choice antimicrobials, inappropriate initial selections, changing health challenges requiring different approaches.

Resistance Pattern Insights

When culture and sensitivity testing is performed, Kora can track which pathogens are identified and their sensitivity profiles:

Pathogen Identification: Which bacteria are causing infections in your animals? Common pathogens include Staphylococcus aureus, Mannheimia haemolytica, E. coli, Pasteurella multocida, many others depending on species and infection type.

Sensitivity Patterns: For each pathogen, which antimicrobials are effective (sensitive), partially effective (intermediate), or ineffective (resistant)? Patterns over time reveal whether resistance is developing.

Treatment Correlation: Comparing actual treatments to sensitivity results shows whether culture-guided therapy is being used. High correlation indicates evidence-based stewardship. Low correlation suggests empirical treatment without diagnostic support.

Emerging Resistance: Pathogens previously sensitive but now showing resistance to commonly used antimicrobials indicate resistance development requiring immediate protocol changes.

Note: Resistance pattern analysis requires culture and sensitivity testing. May not be performed for all treatments. However, even selective testing on treatment failures or serious infections provides valuable surveillance data.

Cost Analysis

Treatment Cost Tracking

Recording antimicrobial costs supports several management objectives:

Total Antimicrobial Expenses: Understanding total spending helps with budgeting and resource allocation. Unexpected increases warrant investigation. Are you treating more animals, facing new health challenges, or using more expensive products?

Cost Per Treatment: Average cost per antimicrobial treatment across all treatments or within specific categories (species, condition, antimicrobial family). High-cost treatments may be justified by effectiveness or may indicate opportunities for economical alternatives.

Cost Per Animal: Annual antimicrobial costs divided by number of animals under management. This metric supports benchmarking against similar operations. Tracks improvement over time.

Product Cost Comparison: Comparing costs of different antimicrobial products for similar indications. Generic products may offer equivalent effectiveness at lower cost. Brand products may provide consistency or specific formulation advantages.

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Cost alone doesn't determine value. Analysing treatment effectiveness alongside cost reveals true value:

Success Rate by Cost: Do more expensive antimicrobials have higher success rates justifying the cost? Or do economical first-line choices work just as well?

Modification Costs: Failed treatments requiring switching to second-line antimicrobials effectively cost twice as much (first antimicrobial plus second antimicrobial). Improving initial selection reduces these hidden costs.

Prevention vs. Treatment Costs: Comparing costs of preventive health measures (vaccination, biosecurity, improved housing, nutrition) against treatment costs often reveals prevention is more economical than repeated antimicrobial treatments.

Trend Analysis

Usage Trends Over Time

Analysing antimicrobial use month-by-month or quarter-by-quarter reveals important patterns:

Increasing Usage: Rising antimicrobial use may indicate expanding operations (more animals under management), deteriorating health status (more disease), changing management practices, seasonal health challenges, reduced effectiveness requiring more treatments.

Decreasing Usage: Declining antimicrobial use generally indicates improving stewardship. Better preventive health management, improved biosecurity reducing disease introduction, more effective vaccination programmes, enhanced nutrition supporting immunity, better housing reducing stress and disease.

Stable Usage: Consistent antimicrobial use over time suggests stable health status and management practices. However, stable usage doesn't necessarily mean optimal usage. You might consistently be using too much or too little.

Seasonal Patterns: Some operations show predictable seasonal variation in antimicrobial use. Respiratory infections during weather changes, mastitis during wet or hot periods, foot infections during muddy seasons, stress-related illness during management-intensive periods (weaning, breeding, calving). Understanding seasonal patterns supports proactive prevention during high-risk periods.

Effectiveness Trends

Are treatments becoming more or less effective over time?

Declining Effectiveness: Success rates dropping over time may indicate developing resistance, changing pathogen patterns, or deteriorating overall animal health requiring investigation.

Improving Effectiveness: Success rates improving suggests better antimicrobial selection, improved diagnostic support, or overall health improvements supporting faster recovery.

Stable Effectiveness: Consistent success rates indicate stable practices and pathogen susceptibility. Though opportunities for improvement may still exist.

Generating Reports

Report Types

Kora supports several report formats for different purposes:

Summary Reports: High-level overview including total usage, most common antimicrobials, overall stewardship score, key compliance metrics. Useful for quarterly reviews, management meetings, or annual planning.

Detailed Usage Reports: Comprehensive lists of all antimicrobial treatments within date range. Includes complete treatment details, clinical indications, outcomes, costs. Supports in-depth analysis, compliance audits, or research.

Compliance Reports: Focus on regulatory compliance elements including withdrawal period compliance, veterinary consultation rates, treatment completion rates, off-label use documentation. Formatted for regulatory submissions or certification programmes.

Trend Analysis Reports: Month-by-month or quarter-by-quarter usage trends, effectiveness trends, cost trends, pattern changes. Supports strategic planning and continuous improvement initiatives.

Custom Reports: Filter antimicrobial data by date range, animal species, location, antimicrobial product, clinical indication, prescribing veterinarian, or other criteria. Generate targeted analysis for specific questions.

Report Uses

Regulatory Submissions: Many jurisdictions require antimicrobial use reporting. Kora's compliance reports provide documentation needed for regulatory submissions including product names, quantities, clinical indications, prescribing veterinarians, withdrawal periods.

Certification Programmes: Organic certification, animal welfare certification, quality assurance programmes often require antimicrobial use documentation. Stewardship reports demonstrate responsible practices meeting certification requirements.

Veterinary Consultations: Sharing usage reports with veterinarians supports better clinical guidance. Veterinarians can review antimicrobial use patterns, identify improvement opportunities, provide targeted recommendations.

Buyer Requirements: Many buyers (processors, retailers, export markets) require antimicrobial use transparency. Summary reports demonstrate responsible stewardship. May support premium pricing or preferred supplier status.

Internal Management: Regular review of usage reports supports data-driven decision-making about health management, budgeting, staffing, strategic planning.

Benchmarking: Comparing your antimicrobial use metrics against similar operations helps identify whether usage is typical, higher than average (investigate causes), or lower than average (share best practices).

Research and Surveillance: Aggregated antimicrobial use data contributes to broader surveillance programmes monitoring resistance trends and informing public health policy. Participation demonstrates commitment to responsible stewardship.

Using Insights for Improvement

Identify Root Causes

When usage analysis reveals concerning patterns:

High Usage for Specific Conditions: Investigate why particular conditions require frequent antimicrobial treatment. Are these preventable through better management, nutrition, housing, or biosecurity? Can vaccination provide better protection than repeated treatment?

Low Treatment Success Rates: Investigate why treatments fail. Are diagnostic tests supporting appropriate antimicrobial selection? Are dosages correct? Is treatment duration adequate? Has resistance developed?

Increasing Costs: Investigate why antimicrobial costs are rising. Are you using more antimicrobials, using more expensive products, facing more severe infections, or experiencing price increases?

Seasonal Spikes: Investigate why certain periods show dramatically higher usage. What environmental, management, or biological factors contribute? Can proactive interventions reduce seasonal disease?

Implement Improvements

Use insights to guide specific improvements:

Enhance Prevention: If analysis shows high usage for preventable conditions, invest in prevention. Vaccination programmes, improved housing or ventilation, enhanced nutrition, better biosecurity protocols, or management changes that reduce stress.

Refine Treatment Protocols: If effectiveness analysis shows particular antimicrobials consistently work better than others, update treatment protocols. Prioritise effective choices. Reduce use of less effective products.

Improve Diagnostic Support: If treatment modification rates are high, invest in better diagnostic support. Culture and sensitivity testing, rapid diagnostic tests, or more frequent veterinary consultation.

Staff Training: If compliance tracking reveals poor treatment completion or withdrawal period violations, provide targeted training. Antimicrobial stewardship principles and proper treatment administration.

Optimise Purchasing: If cost analysis reveals expensive product preferences without effectiveness advantages, consider economical alternatives or negotiate better pricing.

Monitor Progress

After implementing improvements:

Establish Baselines: Use current metrics as baselines (total usage, stewardship score, completion rates, success rates, costs).

Set Targets: Establish realistic improvement targets. Reduce total usage by 15% through better prevention, increase treatment success rate from 82% to 90% through better diagnostics, improve completion rate from 88% to 95% through better tracking.

Track Changes: Review metrics quarterly to assess whether improvements are achieving desired results. Celebrate successes. Investigate why certain improvements didn't deliver expected benefits.

Continuous Improvement: Stewardship is an ongoing journey, not a destination. Use data-driven insights to continuously refine practices, learn from experience, improve outcomes over time.

Privacy and Data Security

Antimicrobial use data may be commercially sensitive or personally identifiable. Kora supports appropriate data protection:

User-Scoped Access: Antimicrobial records are accessible only to user who created them and authorised collaborators. Other users cannot access your treatment data without your explicit permission.

Aggregated Reporting: When contributing to regional or national surveillance programmes, data is typically aggregated and anonymised to protect individual operation confidentiality while supporting public health monitoring.

Export Controls: You control what information is exported or shared. Generate reports with appropriate detail for specific audiences. Detailed reports for veterinarians, summary reports for buyers, compliance reports for regulators.