Partnerships with industry
To achieve our goal to support the global action against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and healthcare-associated infection (HAI) prevention and control, departmental members work actively with industry partners to investigate novel preventative and treatment approaches.
An example of this is the development of an interactive prototype personal protective equipment (PPE) trainer as part of a collaboration with Surewash. This is a commercially available interactive kiosk that uses camera-based augmented reality and gamified learning to train and assess hand hygiene technique with resultant improvements in compliance. This system is now used in RCSI, for education and assessment of undergraduate medical students, in addition to many healthcare facilities worldwide.
A partnership with MEG support tools to develop a user-friendly antimicrobial stewardship audit app, helped antimicrobial stewardship teams nationally to focus on feedback to improve prescribing (which in turns prevents antimicrobial resistance) rather than spending all their time collecting data.
In addition to working with established industry partners, Enterprise Ireland recently supported an evaluation of the commercial feasibility of a technology being developed by members of the department. This technology, which aims to support hospital cleaning, reduce HAI and promote patient safety, was developed with support from the Office and Research and Innovation at RCSI.
Aspects of our lung biology research are also carried out in collaboration with industry partners. Together with Aerogen we have developed proof-of-concept drug-device combinations comprising of experimental microRNA-targeting drugs coupled with high performance aerosol delivery methods. In the recent past we have also partnered with ChiPro GMBH to test the potential of biopolymer-based nanoparticles for lung gene therapy studies.
Two of our cystic fibrosis research programmes are funded by grants from Vertex Pharmaceuticals. These explore the contribution of estrogen-regulated microRNAs to the expression of pulmonary antiproteases, and, whether circular RNA expression patterns are altered in people with cystic fibrosis and in turn contribute to the pathophysiology of cystic fibrosis lung disease.