Healthcare-Associated Infection Surveillance

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are infections that occur in a healthcare setting and are estimated to affect approximately 7% of patients in high-income countries and approximately 15% of patients in low - and middle-income countries in acute care hospitals. These infections, which are often caused by multidrug-resistant organisms, can lead to significant morbidity and mortality, increased healthcare costs, and regulatory noncompliance. Surveillance of HAIs is a core component of infection prevention and control programs, which serves to help identify outbreaks and transmission routes, guide infection prevention and control measures, and provide valuable data on the prevalence and distribution of specific pathogens and resistance patterns.¹

As part of these surveillance efforts, genomics is unraveling key insights into the genetic makeup of pathogens and enabling more precise identification and tracking of outbreaks and transmission routes. Powered by next-generation sequencing (NGS), labs and clinics can perform genomic HAI-related studies at unprecedented speed and scalability using massively parallel workflows.