New York State Initiative Hopes to Stop the Spread of Super Bugs

Each year in the United States, at least two million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant infections--so-called super bugs. And at least 23,000 of those people will end up dying from them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the deadliest super bugs, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) bacteria, has become resistant to all or nearly all the antibiotics available today. Almost half of hospital patients who get bloodstream infections from CRE bacteria die from them. The problem is so serious that CDC has classified CREs as one of three urgent threats to the public health. To combat this growing crisis, the state of New York is has announced a Life Sciences Initiative. The state’s Wadsworth Center Department of Health, in conjunction with ILUM Health Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck & Co., and OpGen are working together to implement a system of diagnosing patients with antibiotic-resistant pathogens and delivering information to providers in real time. “This is the first step toward developing a digital surveillance network for the state of New York,” Evan Jones, CEO of OpGen, told MD+DI. “It’s really groundbreaking,” he said. “There’s nothing like it in this country.” OpGen’s contribution is the genomic micr...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: IVD Source Type: news