The value of ‘fast diagnostics’

Fast diagnostics have the potential to significantly shorten time to appropriate therapy for bloodstream infections at high risk of sepsis, yet significant barriers to adoption persist, warns a new report by the Office of Health Economics. The report calls for the removal of structural and workflow barriers, so that fast results translate into faster therapy.

Every year, an estimated 104,000 adults in the UK are hospitalised with bloodstream infections at high risk of progressing to sepsis — a quickly deteriorating condition that claims more lives than lung cancer and is the second biggest killer after cardiovascular disease.1,2 New independent modelling shows that deploying fast identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing early in the patient pathway could prevent around 10,000 sepsis cases and 5,200 deaths in the UK every year, generate 4,400 additional years of healthy life, and save the NHS approximately £300 million annually.1

A multi-country health economic analysis has now been published assessing the impact of deploying fast identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing (ID/AST) early in the care pathway for patients with bloodstream infections at high-risk of sepsis.

Conducted by the Office of Health Economics (OHE), one of the world's leading independent health economics research organisations, in all G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States), this health economic analysis is the first to provide evidence that early use of fast diagnostics can reduce preventable deterioration into sepsis, improve patient outcomes, and generate substantial cost savings for healthcare systems consistently across all studied countries.

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