USING GOOGLE TRENDS TO EXPLORE THE INTEREST IN ANTIMICROBIAL STEWARDSHIP IN MALAYSIA

Introduction: Antibiotic stewardship refers to a set of organized plans to improve the usage of antimicrobial drugs. Only few hospitals in Malaysia had implemented a comprehensive antimicrobial stewardship. Objective: This study aims to explore the interest in antimicrobial stewardship in Malaysia. Methodology: An observational study was conducted by the exploration of searching results for the term "antimicrobial stewardship" using google trends from 2004 till April 2019 Results and Discussion Google trends demonstrated that there was an exponentially increasing in searching for the term. Malaysia is the 7th most searching country for the keyword "antimicrobial stewardship" after Australia, Canada, Philippines and Saudi Arabia. Malaysia is the 4th most searching country for antimicrobial stewardship term videos using YouTube. Conclusion There was an increasing in the interest in appropriate use of antibiotic by the implementation of antimicrobial stewardship programs. Malaysia is one of the most countries interested in antimicrobial stewardship as the searching results showed during the last several years.