Awardees Announced for the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome
Vivli is pleased to announce the awardees of the Vivli Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge. This initiative comes at a crucial juncture, with the World Health Organization (WHO) identifying Antimicrobial Resistance as one of the top 10 global health threats facing humanity. Alarmingly, antimicrobial-resistant infections have the potential to become the leading cause of death worldwide by 2050. In response to this pressing issue, Vivli and Wellcome joined forces in mid-2022 to launch the AMR Register, a novel platform featuring industry datasets, consolidating surveillance data for the benefit of researchers.
The AMR Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome, was launched in April 2023, as a catalyst for innovation and support for the inventive reutilization of the wealth of surveillance data available within the AMR Register.
“The AMR data challenge not only reflects the extensive interest but also underscores the significance of making AMR data readily accessible to investigators. Data serves as a catalyst for innovative approaches, which are essential in addressing the global AMR challenge,” said Arjun Srinivasan, MD. CAPT, USPS, Deputy Director for Program Improvement Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, CDC.
A total of 56 teams from 28 different countries participated in the AMR Data Challenge. This event served as a unique platform for multidisciplinary teams to leverage high-quality industry AMR surveillance data, proposing groundbreaking advancements and tools for use in AMR surveillance. The Challenge culminated in the recognition of six outstanding winners for the AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge.
The Grand Prize was awarded to Dr. Fredrick Mutisya, Health Data Scientist & Medical Doctor of Narok County, Kenya, and Dr. Rachael Kanguha, Pediatrician, Chuka County Referral Hospital, Kenya. Their groundbreaking work involved training machine learning models on the Pfizer ATLAS datasets and the development of a novel artificial intelligence web application capable of predicting antibacterial/antifungal susceptibility. Dr. Mutisya expressed his team’s commitment to AMR and highlighted the importance of providing equitable data accessibility to scientists from his region,
“Our team feels incredibly privileged to have participated in such a meaningful data challenge. Winning the grand prize not only fills us with a profound sense of fulfilment but also ignites a stronger motivation within us to continue seeking solutions for global issues, especially in combating antimicrobial resistance,” he said. “We are deeply grateful to Vivli for providing a platform that facilitates data accessibility. This is particularly significant for scientists like us hailing from the Global South, where opportunities like these are often scarce.”
Other notable awardees and their project titles include:
- Impact Award Winner: Quentin Leclerc, Institut Pasteur, “Stronger together? Potential and limitations of combining industry datasets to fill in global AMR surveillance gaps.”
- Impact Award Winner: Yanhong Jessika Hu, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, “Global Geographic Patterns and Trends of WHO Priority Pathogens and AWaRe Antibiotic Resistance Among Children: amrinkids.com.”
- Innovation Award: Robert Beardmore, University of Exeter, “Are antibiotic breakpoints globally consistent, and does it matter if not?”
- Innovation Award Winner: Shraddha Karve, Ashoka University, “Novel approach to antibiogram analysis: looking at the composite resistance phenotype.”
- Innovation Award Runner-up: Jacob Wildfire, LSHTM/SGUL, “Analysis of variations in minimum inhibitory concentration distributions by patient group.”
Data contributed by GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer, Shionogi, and Venatorx was made accessible through the AMR Register, significantly enhancing the impact of the Challenge.
Prof. Marc Mendelson, Chair of the Vivli AMR Scientific Advisory Board, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine, Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town noted the exceptional quality of the Challenge applications,
“The quality of applications for the Vivli AMR surveillance Open Re-use Challenge was excellent and it is particularly exciting to see the innovative approaches used,” he said. “Ensuring open access to data across the spectrum of private and public sources is a fundamental key to driving innovation towards a better understanding of AMR and the mitigation of this global health crisis.”
Patricia Bradford, PhD, Antimicrobial Development Specialist and a member of the Judging panel spoke of the innovation of the solutions and their impact, “It was exciting to see the creativity of the various teams with regards to novel uses for the susceptibility data generated by the pharmaceutical industry. Our hope is that these efforts will better enable patient care and foster antimicrobial stewardship on a local level.”
Alisa Serio, PhD, Executive Director of Microbiology and Nonclinical Development at Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc. was impressed by the innovative approaches taken by the participating teams and noted, “The outputs of this challenge are exactly what the Vivli AMR initiative was set up for, specifically to openly share surveillance data for researchers to investigate a myriad of questions in AMR to help further understanding, decision-making and policy changes worldwide.”
For more details and to view the winning teams’ solutions, please visit https://amr.vivli.org/data-challenge/finalist-and-award-winning-solutions.
Contact: Catherine D’Arcy, Rebecca Li
About Vivli
Vivli is a non-profit organization working to advance human health through the insights and discoveries gained by sharing and analyzing data. Data sharing initiatives include the AMR Register for AMR surveillance data and the Vivli Platform for clinical trial data. Vivli acts as a neutral broker between data contributor and data user and the wider data sharing community. For more information, visit www.vivli.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @VivliCenter.
Vivli is delighted to announce the publication of a new collection in Wellcome Open Research showcasing the finalists and winners of the 2023 Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome. This growing collection includes nine articles from participating research teams, as well as an editorial co-authored by members of the judges’ panel and Vivli team. 
