Abstract
This report details the outcome of the 1st Hospital Microbiome Project workshop held on June 7th-8th, 2012 at the University of Chicago, USA. The workshop was arranged to determine the most appropriate sampling strategy and approach to building science measurement to characterize the development of a microbial community within a new hospital pavilion being built at the University of Chicago Medical Center. The workshop made several recommendations and led to the development of a full proposal to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as well as to the creation of the Hospital Microbiome Consortium.
Highlights
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI; called nosocomial infections) are usually acquired between 48 hours and 4 days after a patient has been admitted to the hospital
Because collecting microbial samples is relatively inexpensive, and samples can be cryogenically preserved for long periods of time, a costsaving strategy of this plan was to sample 20 rooms, but select only 8 for downstream processing and analysis based on rooms appearing to have high vs low rates of human-microbial interactions, as measured by diagnoses of hospital acquired infections
The timeline for this project was driven by the projected opening date for the new hospital pavilion – January 31st, 2013
Summary
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI; called nosocomial infections) are usually acquired between 48 hours and 4 days after a patient has been admitted to the hospital. The workshop, held at University of Chicago on June 7th-8th, 2012, convened a working group comprising building design, construction, outfitting professionals, as well as project managers, medical staff, hospital management, microbiologists, virologists, building scientists, and standards officials to define the most appropriate sampling regime to capture the source and development of microbial communities and hospitalacquired infections in a new hospital building being built at the University of Chicago. This hospital became operational in February 2013, and the aim was to sample the building, patients, and staff in a systematic coordinated approach from January 2013 to January 2014. Exploring correlations of community profiles with information regarding the abundance and types of people using specific locations will help to determine the relationships between the development of the indoor microbiome in the hospital and the human social interaction with that space
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