We rely on hospitals all over the United States and around the world for bacterial strains to add to our database. Together, we can create the world’s largest database of bacterial strains, resistance profiles, geographical locations and drug responses so that doctors, hospitals and scientists around the world can use to discover the next generation of antibiotics and to keep the current strains at bay.
For hospitals involving hospital-associated microbiology clinical laboratories is critical for building ARMADA’s antimicrobial reconnaissance backbone. Hospital physicians often deal with complicated and life-threatening types of bacterial infections. Ineffective antibiotic selection is one of the main reasons of prolonged hospital stays and negative outcomes in many clinical situations, such as those observed in patients with sepsis, bacterial pneumonia. In addition, nosocomial infections are among the main menaces for hospitalized patients, driving up healthcare costs and resulting in 80,000 deaths annually in USA alone.
We would like to invite clinical diagnostic laboratories that are involved in bacterial isolation and identification to provide microbiological cultures from various patient specimens (e.g. urine, feces, sputum, throat swab, wound secretions, etc.). We have extensive experience in working with microbiology laboratories from hospitals across the US and other countries using standardized bacterial collection protocols. We would like to request that you partner with ARMADA by providing us a sample of the bacterial isolates that are routinely obtained as part of routine microbiological diagnostics, considering that:
- the sampling of isolated bacteria does not compromise the clinical diagnostics protocol;
- the original specimen type is known;
- the suspected pathogen is in a clinically-significant load and identified to the species level;
- the bacterial sample is likely to represent a pure culture;
- the sample is completely de-identified (stripped from any patient Information),
- the shipment is received in a timely manner and in a condition workable for downstream processing by ARMADA staff (sub-culturing, antibiogram testing, genetic analysis, etc).
On the ARMADA’s end we will:
- supply pre-coded collection swab tubes for each type of specimen with a submission label;
- include brief protocols describing the specimen collection, storage and shipment instructions, provide pre-paid return envelopes/containers that are compliant with local and national Hazardous Material Shipping guidelines;
- pay your offices processing fees for each sample shipped to compensate for the effort involved in specimen collection and shipment.
ARMADA’s mission also includes collecting additional information about the pathogen, that may be extracted from either the laboratory or medical records in some cases. This may include specific bacterial phenotypes of interest, clinical diagnosis, treatment regimens and/or outcomes, patient demographics, co-morbidities and observed infection-associated complications. These types of details are not required and will only be collected in collaboration with appropriate institutional teams under a separately negotiated scope of work and budget.
ARMADA’s staff will help all participating institutions to ensure that any work done with ARMADA is in compliance with local and national regulations regarding protection of human subjects. In general, the provision of otherwise routinely collected but de-identified bacterial specimens (without accessing laboratory or medical records and stripped of any PHI) is considered as research that either does not involve human subjects or eligible for human subjects research exemption. In cases when patient data are accessed, written patient consent and/or other compliance reviews may be required. For more information you may visit The Office for Human Research Protections site. We will make sure that all compliance-related information and documentation is obtained appropriately from the partners or an independent institutional review board (IRB) before any work is started by either the hospital or ARMADA staff.
To initiate discussions of partnering with ARMADA or to obtain any additional information please contact us using the form below. A special representative will be assigned to work with you and address all your possible needs and concerns.