Greater availability of rapid, accurate diagnostics for infections would greatly reduce the over-prescription of antibiotics and slow the growth of antibiotic resistance. It would also help ensure that the right antibiotics are prescribed at the right time, thereby reducing suffering and increasing survival. However, despite major advances in diagnostic technology, few useful diagnostics for bacterial infection have made it to market and we are even seeing a downward trend in innovation in this area.

This Research Topic proposes to identify the key barriers that remain once a new diagnostic has been developed, looking at recent technological advances that ultimately failed to be authorized, adopted, or able to change prescribing. It will also look at technologies that have helped in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. Are there any features or particularities that seem to have improved their chance of success? Lessons from the failures and few successes will be used to examine how regulation, reimbursement, technology transfer, and organizational characteristics might be improved to make them succeed within the clinical setting. The work will focus on each of these themes in developed world settings but also use them as a lens (in addition to a technical lens) to examine determinants in a selection of middle-income country settings and settings that are severely resource-deprived.

We wish to explore the following themes:
• Uptake of diagnostics in the clinical/laboratory setting;
• Uptake of diagnostics in LMIC settings in particular;
• Regulation;
• Intellectual property
• Diagnostic pre-qualification;
• Technology diffusion;
• Reimbursement;
• Technology transfer;
• Technology maintenance and support;
• Diagnostic technology replacement in the clinical/laboratory setting.

All types of manuscripts are welcome.

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Public Health

Participating Journals

Impact