Developing a Strategic Research Agenda for Healthcare Research

Strategic research agenda helps among others highlight critical areas in need of investment, future research, and policies. Systematic and reproducible approaches are essential crutches for priority setting exercises that are integral to developing such agenda. However without prior knowledge and experience, embarking on setting research priorities and roadmaps for healthcare or any research can be a daunting experience.

In this latest educational document from COMBACTE-MAGNET EPI-Net, the results of a state-of-the-art review are presented with the aim to guide any stakeholder looking for recommendations on how to develop a research agenda.

Developing a strategic research agenda_an EPI-Net educational document

EPI-Net

EPI-Net is COMBACTE-MAGNET’s European network to harmonise and connect various European systems of disease surveillance, by linking clinical, microbiologic, and public health data. EPI-Net maps and organizes available surveillance systems in Europe. EPI-Net will complement the general COMBACTE-NET backbone by strengthening our ability to monitor the spread of healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic resistance across Europe.

EPI-Net’s latest initiative envisions a network of excellence centers in Europe, contributing anonymous epidemiology data to foster development of surveillance strategies in high endemic settings with strict link to infection prevention and control and antibiotic stewardship programmes. The centers will be running high-level international projects on surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic policy to reduce the burden of resistant infections. Healthcare centers can also receive individualized feedback on the effect of antibiotic stewardship and infection control interventions to reduce local resistance rates  based on mathematical modeling of evidence based data.

EPI-Net launched the AMR travel tool. This is a free online platform to raise awareness on the antimicrobial resistance risks and prevention measures related to international travel. The objective is to prevent the risk of acquisition and spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria due to international travel. The interactive, educational tool helps healthcare professionals evaluate travel history and travel-associated risk factors related to antimicrobial resistance as part of their clinical practice and inform travelers on preventive measures to reduce the acquisition and transmission of AMR across borders.