AMEBA
One of humanity’s greatest challenges is the potential spread of infections that can significantly impact global human development. In the recent past, we’ve absorbed an unwanted lesson from such a situation under the name of COVID.
We all know very well how fast infections can spread. In this sense, the speed of identifying an infection is crucial in preventing its transmission. In practice and in people’s lives, there is a huge difference between responding to a detected infection within 4 hours versus within 4 days.
The answer to supporting solutions for such situations lies in the use of information technologies with elements of artificial intelligence.
Ness Slovakia, as a company that has long collaborated in the field of healthcare systems, has implemented and proven in practice a technological solution called AMEBA. This tech solution is capable of covering many epidemiological functions, which are interconnected in the background by artificial intelligence. AMEBA supports interdisciplinary collaboration among epidemiologists, pharmacologists, and microbiologists — all for the benefit of the patient, and ultimately for the benefit of us all.
In cases of infection occurrence, notification emails are automatically sent to the responsible personnel. Generating summaries of processed batches of results from microbiological laboratories, as well as statistics displayed in the form of a graphical signaling system, are standard features.
What is the benefit of the AMEBA system?
A major benefit of the AMEBA system lies in its comprehensive functionality for identifying bacterial infections and in the algorithms that ensure notifications based on detected microorganisms. These algorithms also suggest effective antibiotics — even in cases involving resistant bacteria.
This represents a fight against one of the greatest threats of our time: antibiotic resistance, especially in an era when pharmaceutical companies have not introduced any new antibiotics since the year 2000. Research into new treatments is currently not attractive enough for them due to the rapid emergence of resistance to existing antibiotics.
Treatments related to antibiotic resistance are on average six times more expensive than standard treatments. In some cases, despite the best efforts, treatment is not successful. Resistant bacteria are a threat to humanity. Resistance is a major concern, as there have already been cases of bacterial infections resistant to all known antibiotics. If currently 700,000 people die annually worldwide from antimicrobial resistance, by 2050 that number is projected to reach 10 million people — and not only postoperative patients, as today, but also people undergoing routine medical procedures.
The potential benefits of the AMEBA system extend throughout the entire chain of the healthcare process — from patient to doctor, laboratory, pharmacy, and hospital.
Early identification and proper treatment help reduce human suffering and prevent chaos caused by unplanned overburdening of healthcare personnel.
Significantly lower costs for insurance companies
If we look at the “down-to-earth” direct financial costs — such as hospital stays, repeated examinations, medications, and sick leave — these costs are reduced, and the final result is reflected in the accounts of health insurance companies.
Additional efficiency arises, for example, in microbiological laboratories, due to the reduction of direct communication regarding laboratory results.
All these savings are positive, but they cannot be compared to the value of saved human lives.
Based on practical results, AMEBA appears to be an effective tool for active monitoring of laboratory data.
It processes the flow of information from the microbiological laboratory to the hospital in real time, providing necessary outputs to hospital epidemiologists, clinical pharmacologists, infectologists, and other physicians.
Its main benefit lies in immediate anti-epidemic intervention, carried out right after the export of results from the microbiological laboratory.