Poster ESCMID 2022: Anti-superbugs PCP: a cross-border joint action to improve healthcare-associated infections prevention and control systems

Background: The EU-funded ANTI-SUPERBUGS PCP project (Grant Agreement nº:688878) started in September 2016 with the aim to mobilize public and private procurement organisations to jointly put in action a cross-border procurement procedure to tackle Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time or no longer respond to available drugs or treatments, making infections harder to control and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, AMR was among the top priorities for global public health. Already a complex challenge, it has been evidenced that AMR needs to be addressed in a changing healthcare landscape.

Case(s) description: A consolidated group of six procurement organisations across Europe (Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and Germany) committed themselves to jointly co-invest 2.848.450,41€ (VAT excluded) and collaboratively bridge the identified gap between scientific knowledge and market in the field of AMR through a Pre Commercial Procurement (PCP) procedure, a procurement instrument in which public procurers buy R&D services from several competing suppliers in parallel to compare alternative solutions, identifying the best value-for-money innovations that the market can deliver to address their unmet needs. This procedure is composed of three phases: 1/ Solution Design; 2/ Prototyping and 3/ Pilot Testing.Since June 2021, ANTISUPERBUGS PCP is facing last Phase 3 in which two finalists, both cross-border consortia composed of SMEs and technological centres (Spain, Italy and Ireland), are deploying their first set of prototypes, already validated in lab conditions in Phase 2, to test their ability to detect the presence of MROs in real context through a multicentre comparative study at the premises of Helios Klinikum (Germany), Provincia Autonoma di Trento (Italy) and Fundació Assistencial Mútua Terrassa (Spain). Phase 3 contracts termination and results' analysis are expected by February, 2022.

Discussion: ANTI-SUPERBUGS PCP represents a promising ambitious common demand-driven challenge that has revolutionised current state of the art by researching and developing novel solutions capable to non-invasively and nonintrusively detect the presence of MROs in hospital premises through high complex solutions comprising hardware for sampling, detection, analysis and software for traceability and notification and integrated into hospital information systems.

(https://2022.eccmid.org/)