Top researchers, hospital managers and companies in joint effort to combat infectious disease

The 11th edition of the Swedish American Life Science Summit in Stockholm took place on August 19-21, gathering scientists, doctors, industry representatives and investors from around the world. The main purpose of the annual conference is to create business opportunities and exchange ideas between the participants, transforming research to profitable business. This year’s theme was “Immunology, Cancer and Infectious Disease, highlighting Antibiotic Resistance and Vaccines”.

Hans Rosling, Professor International Health at Karolinska Institutet stated that infectious disease have a greater impact on life expectancy than non-communicable disease, as infections kill at a younger age and are the major cause of death among infants and adolescents.

There is no point of discussing the future if you don’t know the present. There is a need for clever business models to fight infectious disease and antibiotic resistance in all countries, said Hans Rosling.

Otto Cars, Professor at Uppsala University and Founder of the global network ReAct – Action on Antibiotic Resistance, noted that the development pipeline for antibiotics has gone dry. The last antibiotic was developed in 1987.

We have a global crisis in our hands. Antibiotic resistance is a systems failure and everything has to start with prevention, said Otto Cars.

The health economy perspective was also included in the panel discussion about value-based healthcare, concluding that there is a need to consider the outcomes that matter to the patients related to cost per patients.

Bactiguard participated as one of the companies presenting innovative solutions to tackle problems in the healthcare system. Bactiguard provides solutions to prevent healthcare associated infections, which is the most frequent adverse event in healthcare. Studies show that about 30 percent of all healthcare infections can be prevented, so there is a work to be done.