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Key takeaways
- Real-time infection tracking reduces response times and prevents outbreaks
- Interoperability is key to integrating digital surveillance seamlessly into hospitals
- Collaboration accelerates innovation, bringing life-saving solutions to market faster
The rise of multi-drug-resistant pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is considered a major threat by the World Health Organization (WHO) and is associated with increasing morbidity, mortality, healthcare costs and antibiotic use.1 Healthcare institutions are facing mounting pressure to improve infectious disease surveillance and control measures while optimizing antimicrobial stewardship.
We sat down with Laurent Bellavance, VP of Business Development at Nosotech, to discuss how digital infectious disease surveillance technology is revolutionizing infection control, the challenges of implementation, and the significance of collaborative partnerships.
Leveraging digital infectious disease surveillance to combat hospital-acquired infections
HT: The increasing prevalence of multi-drug-resistant pathogens and the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing concern for the international community. Can you tell us more about how software products can address these issues?
Laurent Bellavance: Real-time digital surveillance software can enhance the ability of infection control teams to detect outbreaks, minimize infection risks, and optimize antimicrobial treatments.2 This kind of software tackles the growing problem of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial resistance.
By integrating data from multiple hospital systems—patient admissions, lab results, pharmacy records, and surgical reports—these solutions can enable real-time alerts for clinical teams. This means infection control experts and antimicrobial stewardship teams can identify at-risk patients faster, ensure appropriate antibiotic use, and reduce the spread of infections.3
Additionally, software can automate reporting for national surveillance programs, eliminating manual data entry for adherence with public health regulations. This greatly reduces the burden of data management that impacts the infection control staff and helps focus on key interventions. Advanced outbreak management tools can provide this real-time overview of critical events, allowing hospitals to act swiftly in containing infections.4
How digital surveillance works to prevent the spread of infectious diseases
HT: Digital surveillance technologies have gained a lot more attention in recent years, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you explain how these tools work and their current and future potential to stop the spread of infectious diseases?
Laurent Bellavance: Digital infectious disease surveillance relies on data exchange between healthcare systems and advanced algorithms that detect patterns in infection trends. The key to making this work effectively is interoperability, including semantics, which ensures that patient data from different hospital departments and systems is standardized and processed efficiently.5
For example, software can integrate microbiology lab results to detect early signs of infection, surgery reports to identify post-operative infections, and patient movement data to track potential exposure and transmission.
Such an approach enables real-time surveillance, allowing hospitals to receive automated alerts about post-surgical infection risks, potential outbreaks in specific hospital units, and patients receiving non-optimal antibiotic treatments.
Currently, hospitals use cases have demonstrated up to 90% time reduction for handling infection data records for Healthcare associated bloodstream infections. Hundreds of facilities are already benefiting from these major efficiency improvements.6
Looking ahead, the future of digital infectious disease surveillance includes predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to anticipate outbreaks before they occur, automated prevention measures at the point of patient admission, and enhanced national and global infection tracking.7 By continuously refining our approach, digital surveillance is set to become an essential tool in modern healthcare, improving infection prevention and control efforts worldwide.
Challenges in Integrating Digital Infectious Disease Surveillance into Healthcare Systems
HT: What are the biggest challenges in integrating digital surveillance software into healthcare systems?
Laurent Bellavance: Interoperability and data standardization are the most significant hurdles. Each hospital has different IT systems and workflows, making seamless integration complex.
To address this, it is important to work closely with healthcare authorities to ensure software aligns with both local hospital protocols and national public health mandates. Data standardization is crucial to enable hospitals to adopt new solutions with minimal disruption.
The other challenge is ensuring quick adoption by hospital staff. Streamlining onboarding and training for clinicians and infection control teams helps enable them to start using the system immediately upon implementation.
Ultimately, the goal is to make infection disease surveillance seamless and intuitive, reducing the learning curve for healthcare professionals while maximizing patient safety.
The Power of Collaboration in Driving Healthcare Innovation
HT: How do collaborative business partnerships, especially between smaller and larger industry players, impact healthcare?
Laurent Bellavance: Partnerships in healthcare are essential for accelerating innovation. Startups offer agility, specialization, and deep expertise in infection control, while larger, global leaders bring scale, credibility, and extensive resources.
By combining forces, it’s possible to speed up the delivery of life-saving technologies to hospitals. Instead of hospitals sourcing multiple fragmented solutions, they can now access integrated, high-quality digital surveillance systems developed through strategic collaborations.
Our experience with Startup Creasphere and Roche has shown that when organizations align on value-driven innovation, we can move towards greater efficiency, faster implementation, and ultimately, the delivery of improved patient care.
We are just at the beginning of this journey, and we are excited about the future of digital infectious disease surveillance in order to provide innovative tools for clinicians and for pandemic preparedness.
Contributor
Laurent Bellavance
Vice President of Business Development, Nosotech
Laurent Bellavance has over 25 years of experience in management, marketing, business development, strategic planning and technology innovation. He has held executive and product management positions for different companies, including TELUS and the Quebec Ocean innovation technology hub. During these years, Mr. Bellavance contributed to the implementation of national and international development plans that contributed to support leadership positioning in many fields within science and technology. His diversified career path led him to Nosotech in 2014, where he has held various positions and is now responsible for business development in all targeted markets.
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References
- World Health Organization. (2025). Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial-resistance [Accessed March 2025]
- Rawson TM et al. (2024) The Lancet 6(12):e914-e925. Paper available from: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(24)00198-5/fulltext [Accessed March 2025]
- Hayek J. (2024). Article available from: https://www.hospitalia.fr/L-hygiene-hospitaliere-prend-de-plain-pied-le-virage-numerique_a3993.html
- Marco L et al. (2023). Article available from: https://www.spiadi.fr/app/files/limoges.783d1fb6130a7d2ce12bffb354d7c65c.pdf [Accessed March 2025]
- de Mello BH et al. (2022). Health Technol (Berl) 12(2), 255–272. Paper available from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791650/#:~:text=To%20that%20end%2C%20semantic%20interoperability,the%20information%20across%20organizational%20boundaries [Accessed March 2025]
- RéPIA SPIADI (n.d.) Article available from: https://www.preventioninfection.fr/spiadi-surveillance-et-prevention-des-infections-associees-aux-dispositifs-invasifs/ [Accessed March 2025]
- Marra AR et al. (2023). Cambridge University Press 44(12), 1909-1912. Paper available from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/infection-control-and-hospital-epidemiology/article/abs/brave-new-world-leveraging-artificial-intelligence-for-advancing-healthcare-epidemiology-infection-prevention-and-antimicrobial-stewardship/7B62059FB29F7CA3DC2E250669862041 [Accessed March 2025]