Bumrungrad International Hospital is joining with Biotia, a New York-based health tech startup, to pilot artificial intelligence (AI) and sequencing-based technology to reduce time for detecting pathogens and drug resistance.
"The two companies have partnered to develop AI and health-related technology to analyse, diagnose and treat cases involving drug-resistant pathogens and next-generation sequence-based pathogen detection," said Somsak Chaovistsaree, chief executive of medical doctors at Bumrungrad.
Existing clinical processes for pathogenic cultures testing antibiotic resistance is time-consuming and labour-intensive, often delaying categorisation of microbial resistance levels and even miscategorising them, Dr Somsak said.
This new technology will help reduce clinical processing time from three days to six hours.
"This one-year pilot project collaboration to collect 1,000 samples will help collect big data based in the hospital and strengthen the hospital in advanced medical technology, moving towards med tech 4.0," Dr Somsak said.
There are 87,751 cases of antibiotic resistance each year in Thailand, resulting in 38,481 patient deaths, or 43%. This resistance requires 3.24 million more patient days in hospitals.
Annual spending on antimicrobials is 2.5-6 billion baht, and the economic impact of drug resistance is 40 billion baht, or 0.6% of Thai GDP, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Over 700,000 people worldwide die annually because of drug-resistant pathogens, and that figure is estimated to reach 10 million by 2050, with 4.7 million in Asia, the WHO said. The economic impact is trillions of baht.
The agency describes the post-antibiotic era as one where a single infection can lead to immediate death. The Thai Public Health Ministry views antibiotic resistance as an urgent medical issue.
Niamh O'Hara, co-founder and chief executive of Biotia, said Bumrungrad is the first hospital in Asia-Pacific where the startup is expanding its international collaboration network, as the hospital is an early adopter of heath technology innovation and has a diverse sample of international patients.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology and microbial identification software were developed to accurately identify the type and characteristics of micro-organisms. This is part of precision medicine and treatment for real-time organism identification using portable sequencers.
The technologies have been applied to diagnose infectious diseases, determine prognoses, screen potential pathogens and decrease the risk of hospital-acquired infections, which can be as high as 1 in 25 patients.
This new technology will address challenges in fungal infection and tuberculosis diagnosis faster," Ms O'Hara said. "We keep patient data anonymous and privacy under HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance."
She said the cost of next-generation sequencing has dropped 100,000 times as computation and AI technology have advanced.
The collaboration has led to sequencer and AI software to process 1,000 samples of patient data sets and provide total microbial profile plus drug-resistance markers.