In a week that was dominated by chatter about the purchase of a smallish Aussie EMR vendor by a global EMR behemoth and the never-assuaged desire for news of all things My Health Record, it was a nice yarn about two Top Enders adapting what tools they had at hand to a job that needed doing that piqued the curiosity of many of our readers.

They have built a bespoke system that takes reports from two commercial products – CSC's MedChart ePrescribing system and InterSystems' TrakCare Lab pathology system – dumps them into an Excel spreadsheet and runs them through a series of rules. At the end is a practical and easy to use antimicrobial stewardship system that they believe has prevented many adverse events.