Sepsis is the Achilles’ heel of health care. Despite being relatively unknown to the public, it is a top killer in hospitals and the cost burden is crushing to our healthcare system. More and more, sepsis is keeping hospital CFO’s up at night and is the focus of widespread hospital initiatives. And labs play a critical role in providing a solution that provides return on investment for hospitals and improves patient care.

Hospitals’ top defense against sepsis today is empiric therapy, a probability based approach with broad-spectrum antibiotic care in the absence of species-specific information about the cause of a patient’s infection (if they have an infection at all). Despite the successes of empiric therapy, it is still severely limited by lack of actionable diagnostic information, with studies demonstrating that up to 40% of bloodstream infections receive incorrect treatment.

In this talk, entrepreneur and CEO John McDonough will share how lab implementation of rapid diagnostics can significantly improve empiric therapy, reduce costs, and potentially save lives. New tests now available in over 160 hospitals worldwide allow for more targeted empiric therapy, improving patient outcomes and driving down hospital costs through reduced length of stay and pharmacy costs. Mr. McDonough will present on the breakthrough T2Bacteria and T2Candida Panels, the first FDA-cleared tests to directly provide species-specific results for sepsis-causing pathogens in 3 to 5 hours, without the wait for blood culture. 

 
Learning Objectives: 

1. Review the efficacy of empiric therapy for patients at risk of sepsis and blood stream infections
2. Describe the limitations of current sepsis management
3. Review T2MR technology for rapid identification of bacterial pathogens
4. Describe ability for breakthrough diagnostic technology to improve empiric therapy and provide faster, targeted therapy