As we all enjoy Infection Prevention Week for 2025, I thought I’d take a look into the literature to see whether anybody has done some cost-effectiveness work for an IPC service as a whole. I came across this “Umbrella” review (i.e. a review of reviews!), which looks at the cost-effectiveness of interventions to tackle HCAI and AMR (to include IPC, AMS, diagnostic stewardship), and thought it was worth sharing. The bottom line: there’s a lot of cost-effectiveness evaluations for IPC interventions, most of which are cost-effective, but a bit of a gap around cost-effectiveness of the service as a whole.
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What are the key barriers to implementing prospective WGS surveillance in IPC?
I’ve just read an enjoyable commentary in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy exploring barriers and solutions to implementing proactive WGS in IPC. It links in nicely with a post I wrote towards the end of last year along similar lines. So what are the key barriers and how do we overcome them?
Continue readingWhole genome sequencing to support IPC has been ‘the future’ for too long
There has been a lot of excitement about the prospects of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to support infection prevention and control in a really meaningful way over the past decade or two. But to me this potential seems largely unfulfilled. WGS remains largely the domain of reference and research laboratories, and has not transitioned effectively to support IPC daily decision making. A recent review highlights the potential of WGS to support IPC, and identifies some of the barriers to be overcome if WGS really is to be a big part of our future in IPC.
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Reflections on Infection Prevention and Control 