Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

The emergence of drug resistant infectious disease is a growing threat to public health. Healthcare acquiredx000D
infections (HAI) are the 4th leading cause of death in Canada and expected to be the 2nd cause of mortality byx000D
2050. One of the primary causes of spread of these infections is inadequate detection and disinfectionx000D
processes at vulnerable sites such as clinics, hospitals, transportation hubs, schools, and long term carex000D
facilities. In order to cull unnecessary infection resulting from transmission originating from contaminatedx000D
facilities, rapid identification of infection agents is critical to assess risk and determine adequate quarantinex000D
and disinfection procedures to put into place. At present, the prompt determination of antibiotic resistantx000D
bacteria is not possible because existing technologies require a time-consuming pre-culturing step to reachx000D
detectable levels. In the absence of rapid results, risk assessment is conducted solely on experience andx000D
judgment rather than diagnostic data. To address the unmet need for a rapid and fully integrated technologiesx000D
for bacterial detection and identification, the proposed research in this objective will develop and validatex000D
components capable of pathogen identification on physical surfaces.