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"AutoMated tool for Antimicrobial resistance Surveillance System (AMASS)" is an open-access, offline application to automatically generate AMR surveillance report using microbiology data and, if avaiable, hospital admission data.
Key Features of AMASS
1) Save time and effort needed to generate an AMR surveillance report
What normally takes weeks of manual data cleaning, data analysis and making a report is completed in minutes.
2) Open-access
AMASS can be downloaded FREE of charge and is under a CC-BY 4.0 license, so hospitals and countries can use, adapt and redistribute it with just a proper citation.
3) User-friendly
No prior experience with statistical software (e.g., R and Stata) or programming (e.g., Python) is required. Users place their data files in a folder and double-click a single application file.
4) Highly compatible
Hospitals can use AMASS regardless of which hospital information system (HIS), electronic health record (EHR) system or laboratory information management system (LIMS) they use, as long as data files can be exported in Excel or CSV format.
5) Offline, and therefore secure
AMASS runs on a standalone computer inside the hospital, with no internet connection, server or database required. Patient-level data never leave the hospital, and the report contains only aggregated results.
and there is more.
6) Uses data that hospitals already collect
AMASS analyses routine microbiology laboratory data and hospital admission data. No new data collection system, extra staff time or additional paperwork is needed.
7) Adaptable to local coding
Dictionary files (in Excel format) allow each hospital to map its own column names, organism codes and antibiotic codes to the standard ones, so the software does not need to be modified.
8) Aligned with international standards
Analyses follow WHO GLASS methods, including deduplication of isolates and separation of community-origin and hospital-origin infections.
9) More than just the proportion of resistance
AMASS also estimates the frequency of bloodstream infections caused by each priority pathogen per 100,000 tested patients and the mortality of patients with those infections, which are the indicators most useful to clinicians and policymakers.
10) Ready-to-use outputs
The tool generates a formatted PDF report with tables and figures, together with the underlying summary data files that can be submitted to national and global surveillance systems.
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11) Built-in example data files
AMASS is distributed with example data files ( watch the demonstration video) so users can run the tool and see a complete report before preparing their own data. The examples also serve as templates showing exactly which columns and formats are expected. 12) Built-in data quality checks
Verification tables, blood culture contamination rates and summaries of missing or inconsistent records help laboratories find and correct problems in their own data.
13) Comparable results
The same analytical code is applied in every hospital, so findings can be compared across hospitals, over time and between countries.
14) Supported and documented
Step-by-step instructions and a bilingual (English and Thai) FAQ page are available, and AMASS is updated regularly in response to user feedback.
15) Proven in practice
AMASS has been used by hospitals in low- and middle-income countries across several continents, and its methods and outputs are described in peer-reviewed publications (Publications page).
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