Chair: Dr Mairi Macleod
This SMVN group is therefore central to relevant Scottish Government policy and works with stakeholders at national / international levels. There are many antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) methodologies. The SMVN Scientific Manager, in collaboration with National Procurement and Health Board colleagues, led on standardisation of antimicrobial susceptibility testing across all NHS Boards, resulting in national procurement of the bioMérieux Vitek 2 for all Boards. Since then, with leadership from the current group chair, the SMVN has been able to secure bespoke antibiotic panels for testing on the Viteks. EUCAST interpretive criteria are applied to the Viteks. Scotland is the only country to have EUCAST interpretive criteria added to the Vitek software prospectively and this is led by the group chair in collaboration with the company, bioMérieux. All other countries have to use out-of-date EUCAST interpretive criteria and aspire to match the achievements of Scotland; this is especially so for our counterparts south of the border.
The AMR Diagnostics Group, its Chair and its representatives have developed an “exceptional phenotypes list” which underpins national one-health surveillance reports. Additionally, the SMVN allows Boards to flag up emerging antibiotic resistance before national trend become obvious. Again – this is a function not available elsewhere in the UK. The AMR Diagnostics Group has a number of high-level stakeholders. It works closely with the CNOD and has recently been asked to provide diagnostic stewardship reporting targets in relation to AMR. The group actively contributes to the activities of groups including: ARHAI Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), the Scottish Antimicrobial Prescribing Group (SAPG), Scottish Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) Education Framework Group, the Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance (SONAAR) Group and the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC).