Very Brief Blog: BARDA Industry Day October 15-16, 2019

BARDA is the innovative and important biotech defense agency.   I've had several contacts with them in the last two years and BARDA has very impressive and proactive management.   BARDA regularly funds medical diagnostics related to sepsis and pathogen identification (see for example LexaGene here, Inflammatix here).   BARDA also supports the CARB-X industry-government partnership (here).

On October 15-16, 2019, BARDA hosts its industry days, at the Hyatt in Washington.  I attended last year and it was extremely interesting.  Registration is free; it's a big event (many hundreds of attendees) and may become fully booked as the event draws closer.  See web pages and registration here.

More About BARDA

See BARDA at Wikipedia, here.

Other Infection and Sepsis News

In other news, Friday, September 13, 2019, is World Sepsis Day, here.   For example, Thermo Fisher has a whole range of webinars and activities in September, here.     See Sepsis Alliance, here.  German Sepsis Society is currently holding its annual conference in Weimar, September 11-13, 2019, here.    ID WEEK will be held in Washington, October 2-6, 2019 - here.    Stay in DC for BARDA, October 15-16, as above.

If these topics are of interest to you, see CMS administrator Seema Verma's article in Health Affairs on CMS and antibiotic resistance, here.  (Last year, Pew Foundation called on CMS to do more, here; similar theme at APIC here.*)  Joint Commission also works in this area, here.  You may also want to track the President's Advisory Council on Antibiotic Resistance, PAC-CARB, here, and the HHS new 2020-2025 5-Year-Plan for antibiotic resistance.   See also the topic page at World Health Organization here.

DISARM Legislation in Congress

Also in Washington, this fall Congress is considering the DISARM Act, which would provide hospitals special payments for special-class antibiotics if the hospital (A) has an approved antibiotic stewardship program, and (B) contributes data to a CDC big data program on antibiotics and resistance.   Articles here and here.

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Footnote.

* Along the theme of CMS doing something creative to push forward antibiotic management issues, I noticed that CMS just released an open-ended public request for comments and ideas on how CMS can better address opioid management.   (Here).  From my observations, it would be a good idea if CMS also did a parallel community-wide request for idea - request for information, RFI - on antibiotic management.