Road Map to Saving a Million Lives

Want to save a million lives? More efficient diagnostics could do it.

When you go to the hospital, you go with the expectation that you’re going to get better. You’re not thinking that you might get an infection and end up worse off than before.

The likelihood of getting an infection while in hospital is one in 20 and, in Canada alone, hospital visits result in 200,000 infections and 8,000 deaths per year.

But the scary part isn’t the stats, it’s that much of the death and illness is aggravated by slow diagnostic testing — an area of our health-care system and health research that is often overlooked, but has compounding, life-threatening implications.

Lucky for us, UCalgary researcher Dr. Ian Lewis, PhD, didn’t overlook the opportunity and hopes to change the stats through his rapid diagnostic research and partnership with Calgary Lab Services. The team, based out of Calgary Centre for Rapid Diagnostics, are developing faster, better, more precise testing. The end goal? Save a million lives.   

So why do people die from infections and what can be done?

We spend billions of dollars on problems that are really hard to fix. Terrible things like heart disease, diabetes and cancer are nearly insolvable problems. However, “people also die from really stupid things — things that are solvable,” says Lewis. “It just requires applications of effort and recognizing that there is a problem.”

Super bugs: you should be worried

You’ve probably heard of drug-resistant infections or “super bugs.” These bugs are becoming more and more resistant and we should be worried. In the foreseeable future, North American life expectancy is thought to decrease by 20 years as a result of our inability to control common infections, Lewis told alumni at Idea Exchange San Francisco. Modern medicine requires antibiotics. Everything from joint replacements to chemo treatment and organ transplants are not possible in a world where antibiotics are unreliable. There will come a time when clinicians will have to weigh the risk of you getting an infection with the benefits of undergoing surgery.

Current technology is what could stand between you and dying in a hospital bed

Lewis indicates that current lab testing technology contributes to antibiotic resistance because it takes so much time to test and identify the proper treatment. In the meantime, in an effort to help the patient, the doctor takes a guess and may end up prescribing a less-effective or ineffective antibiotic, resulting in overuse and misuse of the drugs.

Finally, the results are sent to your doctor two to five days later.

Doesn’t seem too bad, right? But the thing is that, meanwhile, the patient is waiting and getting sicker. Your probability of dying is based on how fast the bacteria makes babies. So every hour that elapses between the onset of symptoms to you getting the right drug effects your chances of survival.

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This content was developed from the Idea Exchange in San Francisco event that took place on Oct. 29, 2018. Learn more about exploring big ideas at Idea Exchange.