Nanomaterials for real-time bacterial species identification using a hand-held imaging device

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The emergence of drug resistant infectious disease is a growing threat to public health. Healthcare acquiredinfections (HAI) are the 4th leading cause of death in Canada and expected to be the 2nd cause of mortality by2050. One of the primary causes of spread of these infections is inadequate detection and disinfectionprocesses at vulnerable sites such as clinics, hospitals, transportation hubs, schools, and long term carefacilities. In order to cull unnecessary infection resulting from transmission originating from contaminatedfacilities, rapid identification of infection agents is critical to assess risk and determine adequate quarantineand disinfection procedures to put into place. At present, the prompt determination of antibiotic resistantbacteria is not possible because existing technologies require a time-consuming pre-culturing step to reachdetectable levels. In the absence of rapid results, risk assessment is conducted solely on experience andjudgment rather than diagnostic data. To address the unmet need for a rapid and fully integrated technologiesfor bacterial detection and identification, the proposed research in this objective will develop and validatecomponents capable of pathogen identification on physical surfaces.