RIVM has over 15 years of experience setting up and coordinating national and international AMR surveillance networks.

ISIS-AR

In 2008, the Infectious Disease Surveillance and Information System for Antibiotic Resistance (ISIS-AR) was initiated by RIVM in close collaboration with the National Society for Medical Microbiology and the Dutch clinical microbiology laboratories. ISIS-AR collects antibiotic susceptibility test results from routine microbiological diagnostic testing conducted at clinical microbiology laboratories in the Netherlands. With these data, ISIS-AR monitors the emergence of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms and gives insight into the current local and national antibiotic resistance trends and is frequently used for the development of empiric antibiotic treatment guidelines and policies to control antibiotic resistance. Currently, data are collected on a monthly basis, but a pilot study is being conducted to develop near-real-time data transfer system based on the HL-7 international data standard.

EARSS

In 1998, the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (EARSS) was implemented and coordinated by RIVM. EARSS was a network of national AMR surveillance networks in Europe. EARSS addressed the need for AMR data to raise awareness of the AMR problem and for informed decision-making among stakeholders and policymakers. In 2010 this surveillance network and its coordination was transferred to ECDC, together with all the other disease-specific surveillance networks, and continues now as EARS-Net.

CAESAR

In 2012, recognising that AMR was still neglected in many countries outside the European Union and no systematic surveillance existed in a large part of the European region, WHO Europe, together with RIVM and ESCMID, launched the Central Asian and Eastern European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistance (CAESAR). The objective of CAESAR is to set up a network of national surveillance systems so that the trends in AMR can be assessed in all WHO European region member states. The methods used in CAESAR have been developed in close collaboration with EARS-Net at ECDC to make it possible to combine data from the two surveillance networks so that trends in AMR can be compared across all European countries.

WHO CC AMR actively contributes to the further development of the CAESAR network and supports countries to strengthen or set up national AMR surveillance through online and on-site technical support and capacity-building workshop.