Integration of biometric ID for the effective collection and epidemiological evaluation of antibiotic prescription in tuberculosis and other diseases: A medical hypothesis

Objective: Tuberculosis (TB) poses a huge socioeconomic burden and remains listed among the top ten causes of deaths across the globe, despite enormous efforts of health agencies and researchers. The primary concern in a relatively slower pace of curbing TB is the emergence of multi-drug resistance and difficulty in tracking antibiotic consumption. Methods: We propose here a biometric-linked digital means of antibiotic prescription data collection and its utility for various epidemiological assessments. Results: In this short communication, we propose here, a visionary workflow to explore the use of biometric identification system to gather the antibiotic prescription information for tuberculosis cases and real-time monitoring over a global scale. Our proposal is mainly aimed at collection of antibiotic prescription data at clinician level and point of sales level using a simple fingerprint-based biometric approach and its linkage to unique biometric IDs such as Aadhar in India and related systems in other countries. Conclusion: The online server and web-interface are aimed at facilitating the health organizations and medical councils to monitor the antibiotic prescription and their consumption in real time. This will not only augment the existing policy-making regarding drug-resistance programs but also promote the collection and downstream exploratory analysis of huge amount of data to get a deeper insight into the epidemiology of tuberculosis and related diseases.