Advanced Healthcare Technologies - from Concept to Practice

Over the last 15 years, there has been great progress in combating HIV. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is one of the most effective tools used against the virus. Ensuring access to the best ART regimens can be challenging.

Bringing the HIV epidemic under control is within reach, but smart, targeted approaches are needed to break the cycle of infection. HIV is not only a clinical challenge, but also a medico-social, moral and economic problem. In this regard, prevention is a financially beneficial method for addressing the devastating impact HIV has on individuals and society. Research progress, diagnostic solutions, treatment advancement, patient’s involvement and society engagements are effective steps for success in the fight against HIV.

There can be no doubt that the face of diagnostics and drug discovery has changed beyond recognition over the last decade. Advances in the techniques of molecular analysis, and the ever-increasing use of automation, especially high throughput approaches, have paved the way for new, rapid and more reliable diagnostics tests.

However, a number of problems remain, namely, inequity in the access and coverage of available services, lax regulations on the quality of health services in general and of genetic services in particular. It is expected that the continued work of medical genetics will lead to an improvement in the access and quality of genetic and healthcare services overall. Progress and discoveries in the field of human genetics/ genomics can provide powerful new approaches to understanding the development of diseases, to their reliable diagnostics and to creating new strategies for their prevention and treatment.

Antibiotic resistance has become an imminent global public health threat and multiple studies have identified resistant bacteria and detected resistance genes in environmental samples. Water resulting from human activities is collected at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), turning them into unintentional collection points for antimicrobial drugs, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and resistance genes (ARG).

Continuous and systematic monitoring of wastewater may provide early warning signs and will potentially identify infectious particles and ARB, thus alerting public health officials on the ongoing or future disease outbreaks.