Curbing the development and spread of 'high risk' bacterial pathogens

MDR (multi-drug Resistant) og XDR (Extensively drug resistant) Pseudomonas aeruginosa clone types spread at alarming rates in hospital environments, and there is a clear need to limit the development and spread of these 'high risk' bacterial pathogens. I will describe our recent efforts to use genomic information to determine the mechanism by which these clone types evolve and spread, and our work on the development a web-based tool that can make identification of high risk clones faster in the clinical microbiology hospital departments. The rationale behind the development of this tool is that faster diagnosis will help to improve containment of the pathogens.