The kick-off meeting with the 24 participating hospitals and the project consortium on 23 February 2022 officially started REVERSE - the multi-centre, stepped-wedge, cluster-randomised clinical study on the effectiveness of microbiology and diagnostic stewardship, infection prevention and control, and antibiotic stewardship programmes.

The focus of the meeting was on introducing the 24 participating hospitals in Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain, and giving an overview of the foreseen scientific work programme in REVERSE. Part of the kick-off meeting was spent on training the participating hospitals for the work in the first months of the clinical study.

The overarching goal of REVERSE is to develop and implement cost-effective strategies and tools for the prevention and clinical management of healthcare-associated infections due to multidrug-resistant pathogens and to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance in healthcare settings with high rates of infections due to antimicrobial resistance, for example in the four European countries with participating REVERSE hospitals. To achieve this goal, we will run a successful clinical trial that will sequentially roll out the defined intervention programmes to the 24 participating hospitals in the four European countries over a period of four years. The first six hospitals will be randomised to start the first intervention programme after a six-month baseline period during which preliminary data and information will be collected. The other 18 hospitals will start the intervention programme within the following nine months.

The data collected during the study will determine the efficacy of the different interventions and will enable the development of an integrated, multifaceted package of interventions together with a validated implementation strategy in a range of economically diverse healthcare systems to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance in settings with high rates. At the end of the project, the European countries participating in REVERSE will have a platform of highly experienced hospitals to build and expand a national network, as well as to share strategies and success stories on an international level for combatting antimicrobial resistance.

If you want to learn more about the REVERSE Clinical Study Kick-Off Meeting, please visit the event website.

If you want to learn more about the clinical trial itself, please visit the website on Work Package 1 of REVERSE.