Tonight, I started watching the Oxford Nanopore Technologies London Calling 2024 expert panel on “Building a rapid, targeted, and responsive infectious disease system.”Aaron Pomerantz, the Associate Director of Global Segment Marketing at ONT, helped facilitate the session. Dr. Ines Hassan from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change started. Hassan helps encourage the development and deployment of technology for global health. They also want to focus on multi-disease surveillance and next-generation sequencing. Hassan explained some initiatives in Rowanda and resource-scarce areas. For this, access and interoperability of data are critical. Hassan mentioned financing and investment in infrastructure several times as critical needs. For this, training and supply chain support must also be considered. The next panel member was Chuck Cooper from bioMerieux France. Cooper spoke about the application of metagenomics in clinical settings, for example. He noted that most are observational studies. Cooper thinks we are undergoing the transition to evaluate the clinical value in managing infectious diseases. Cooper described new randomized prospective studies with classical microbiology and metagenomic approaches. He is excited about what is coming in this area! The third speaker was Rahul Batra from Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trus in the UK. Batra has been working on hospital-acquired infections. They are focusing on the use of sequencing technologies for frontline care. Batra and the team have run metagenomics analyses for specific patient samples for the last three winters. The last speaker was Heather Carleton from the CDC, who serves as the chair of PULSENet. Carleton spoke about foodborne infections and tracking of certain organisms. They receive about 65,000 isolates each year. Carleton also noted that they receive about 6,000 Shiga toxin E. coli isolates each year. Using Pomerantz as an example, Carleton role-played the process of understanding a case and exposure. Next, the panelists were invited to answer audience questions. I’ll return to this session tomorrow!
