On October 13-14, 2022, the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, the Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies, and the Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop for stakeholders to discuss the current landscape of rapid point-of-care diagnostics to address antibiotic resistance, consider challenges and opportunities for spurring innovation, and discuss practical next steps for accelerating the development of new diagnostic tools.
Background
The use and misuse of antibiotics contributes to the rise in drug-resistant bacteria – a serious and worsening threat to human health. Addressing the problem of antibiotic resistance requires measures to spur innovation and ensure the prudent use of existing drugs. Rapid point-of-care diagnostics can play an important role in avoiding unnecessary use of antimicrobials by providing clinicians with the right information at the right time to help them make decisions about appropriate drug treatment for patients. Diagnostics also have the capacity to support early detection and diagnosis of drug-resistant bacterial infections, enable disease surveillance, and help prevent disease spread.
The public workshop featured invited presentations and discussions to:
- Examine the current state of rapid diagnostic development, including examples of successes and limitations of current approaches.
- Consider the unique challenges for the development and use/uptake of rapid diagnostics in health care settings (e.g., feasibility of clinical utility studies)
- Consider gaps that rapid diagnostics may be best-suited to address (e.g. tools to support targeted treatment decisions in the healthcare setting, tools to enable real-time surveillance based on routine hospital data).
- Discuss practical short- and long-term opportunities for spurring the development of new diagnostics that can help address antibiotic resistance.
Planning Committee
Kent E. Kester (co-chair), International AIDS Vaccine Initiative
Betsy Wonderly Trainor (co-chair), CARB-X
John Billington, GSK
Carey-Ann Burnham, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Paul Eder, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
Deborah Hung, Harvard Medical School
Amanda Jezek, Infectious Diseases Society of America
Robin Patel, Mayo Clinic
Ribhi Shawar, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, FDA
Susan Van Meter, The American Clinical Laboratory Association
For additional information on the workshop, please visit our project page.