Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority is gearing up to confront a significant uptick in two formidable superbugs, vancomycin-resistant enterococci and Candida auris, through the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
Over the past three years, the prevalence of multidrug-resistant organisms, commonly referred to as superbugs, has seen a troubling rise on the island.
This surge can be attributed to the reallocation of resources aimed at combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Raymond Lai, the chief infection control officer at the Hospital Authority, explained that this shift in resources resulted in a shortage of isolation wards available for patients infected with MDROs.
He stated, “A significant number of isolation wards were allocated to Covid-19 patients, leaving fewer wards available for those infected with MDROs.”
Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a substantial increase in the prescription of broad-spectrum antibiotics, fostering the development of antibiotic resistance within these superbugs.
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According to the authority, the antibiotic resistance rate of vancomycin-resistant enterococci surged from 0.22% in 2021 to 1.2% in 2023, with the number of patients carrying these microorganisms rising from fewer than 40 in 2021 to approximately 140 by late September 2023.
Candida auris, first discovered in Hong Kong in 2019, has also witnessed a spike in carriers, escalating from nearly 200 in 2020 to over 300 by October 31, 2023.
Dr. Lai cautioned that about 10% of individuals hosting this fungus could progress to invasive infections, posing a mortality risk ranging from 53% to 83.3%.
To address this pressing issue, the Hospital Authority is set to launch an AI pilot program in January 2024 at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin and Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung.
The AI system will analyze clinical data to assess the necessity of prescribing antibiotics, initially focusing on a single popular type of antibiotic before expanding its scope to include eight other types and covering 17 public hospitals.
This initiative is not the first instance of AI being harnessed to combat antibiotic resistance.
In May 2023, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and McMaster University employed AI to identify a new antibiotic capable of combating Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacteria responsible for numerous drug-resistant infections.
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