Aquarius Population Health
Transforming health, for everyone
We’re pleased to welcome a new member of the Aquarius team. Beth Shead joined the team in October as our new Research Assistant. She will primarily support our work on patient pathways and micro-costing in sexual health clinics as part of a larger Innovate UK funded project with Atlas Genetics and St. George’s University of London. Beth will also support some of the diverse projects which Aquarius are currently working on.
Aquarius Population Health recently worked with the Applied Diagnostic Research & Evaluation Unit (ADREU) at St. Georges, University of London, to assess the cost-effectiveness of six hypothetical strategies for using antimicrobial resistance point-of-care testing to guide the treatment of gonorrhoea. Our findings were presented at the STI & HIV World Congress in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Wednesday 12th July, Session 15: STI/HIV testing and management].
We were a collaborator on a recent Innovate UK-funded SBRI project with Binx and the Applied Diagnostic Research and Evaluation Unit at St George’s University of London. In this project, our team compared the overall costs, patient benefits and cost-effectiveness of three different multi-pathogen point-of-care testing strategies with the current strategy of microscopy and lab-based testing.
This work was presented at the STI and HIV World Congress which takes place July 9-12 in Rio de Janeiro. The poster can be seen here.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been described as one of the world’s greatest threats to human and animal health. Some reports suggest that by 2050, AMR could kill around 10 million people each year worldwide. Public health leaders warn we could enter a ‘post-antibiotic’ era where easily treatable common infections become untreatable.
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In the second part of this article, we explore what we can do to combat AMR.
That might sound ridiculous, since no one wants to get ill. However as individuals, we can reduce our risk of picking up an infection and reduce our need for antimicrobials. One of the simplest, but probably the most difficult, is to eat a healthy diet and stay physically active. At the Aquarius office, we have a communal fruit bowl to encourage us to eat healthier snacks. We compete in a weekly fitness challenge to see who walks the most steps, encouraging us all to be more active.