Pittsburgh-based UPMC infection preventionists and University of Pittsburgh scientists have collaborated to create an infectious disease detection platform to reduce infections.
The Enhanced Detection System for Healthcare-Associated Transmission system uses genomic sequencing to analyze infectious disease samples from patients. If two or more patients have near-idenical strains of an infection, the platform flags the results for the infection prevention team to find the commonality and halt transmission, according to an April 28 system news release shared with Becker’s. Genomic sequencing enables physicians to know whether two patients have the same infection, especially among patients who don’t have an obvious link, such as staying in the same inpatient unit.
The results of the study were published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The program was run between November 2021 and October 2023 at Pittsburgh-based UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. The platform was credited with preventing 62 infections and five deaths, while netting nearly $700,000 in savings from infection treatment costs.
“This isn’t theoretical — this happened in a real hospital with real patients,” lead author Alexander Sundermann, DrPH, assistant professor of infectious diseases in Pitt’s School of Medicine, said in the release. “And it could easily be scaled. The more hospitals implement this practice, the more everyone benefits, not just by stopping previously undetected outbreaks within the walls of the hospital, but by finding medical device- or medication-linked outbreaks sweeping the nation.”
If healthcare facilities across the nation adopt EDS-HAT, a nationwide outbreak system could be created, the release said.
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