News & Events

Category: News

AMR Data Challenge Winners Set to Present Innovations at ECCMID 2024

Vivli proudly announces recipients of the 2023 Vivli Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, sponsored by Wellcome, will be presenting at the ECCMID 2024 conference in Barcelona from April 27th to 30th. We hope that these innovations using pharmaceutical surveillance data will impact patient outcomes as well as inform antimicrobial resistance policies at local and national levels.

On April 27th Dr. Fredrick Mutisya, co-leader of the team from Narok County, Kenya awarded the Grand Prize will give a one-hour oral session on their team solution entitled “Using machine learning to predict antibacterial and antifungal resistance.” Dr. Mutisya will describe his team’s pioneering use of the Pfizer ATLAS datasets to train machine learning models, unveiling a novel artificial intelligence web application capable of predicting antibacterial/antifungal susceptibility.

On April 28th, Quentin Leclerc from the Institut Pasteur will present his team’s poster exploring the potential of synergizing AMR industry datasets with WHO GLASS data representing their project titled “Stronger together? Potential of combining AMR industry datasets and comparison with WHO GLASS.” This endeavor, leveraging insights from all six AMR Register data contributors alongside WHO resources, received an AMR Data Challenge Impact Award.

Also, on April 28th, Yanhong Jessika Hu of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute will represent her team at the poster session and describe their team’s project on “Global geographical patterns and trends in WHO priority pathogens and AWaRe (Access, Watch, Reserve) antibiotic resistance across age groups: a global surveillance study.” Hu’s meticulous analysis, employing Pfizer’s ATLAS dataset, also garnered an Impact Award in the AMR Data Challenge.

Concluding the series of presentations, on April 29th, Dr. Jacob Wildfire, representing the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will represent his team’s exploration of “Minimum inhibitory concentration distributions of worldwide clinical bacterial isolates vary by patient age and other key variables.” This project, recognized with a Runner-Up Innovation Award, harnessed data from all six contributing industry partners.

The AMR Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome and hosted by Vivli was designed to foster awareness and incentivize the repurposing surveillance data available in the AMR Register. Attracting 56 teams from 28 nations, this event served as a catalyst for cross-disciplinary collaboration and empowered participants to leverage the wealth of high-quality AMR surveillance data generously contributed by GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer, Shionogi, and Venatorx.

Spotlight on the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome

Catch up on an exciting new video now available here showcasing the Challenge winners, several of whom will be presenting their solutions in person at ECCMID 27-30 April 2024.

The Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use 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.

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, provided by GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer, Shionogi and Venatorx, 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.

Awardees Announced for the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome

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.

Breaking News– Vivli announces the AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-use Challenge, funded by Wellcome, to Initiate April 19th

Vivli is launching the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-use Challenge, funded by Wellcome, on 19th April 2023. The data challenge aims to stimulate and support the innovative re-use of surveillance data available in the AMR Register.

This Challenge provides an opportunity for multidisciplinary teams to win prizes by using high-quality industry AMR surveillance data to answer pressing research questions. The data will be shared through the AMR Register.

A series of prizes can be won by research teams from any discipline who find new insights in the data and contributes to the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

What prizes can be won?
There are five monetary awards:
• Grand Prize Award – $20,000
• 4 awards – $10,000 (each) in the categories of Innovation and Impact

Winning teams will additionally be provided with funding towards expenses for ECCMID 2024 if an abstract is accepted.

Sign up to the data challenge Slack Channel to be notified when the challenge is open and to keep updated about the latest information and details about this data challenge.

What’s involved?
On April 19, 2023, teams will be invited to register and submit a short summary of the research they intend to undertake with the data (and Expression of Interest or EOI). The EOIs will be reviewed and teams will be given access to the data for a 30-day window, during which solutions must be submitted.

These submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges and finalists selected. Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their idea to a panel of judges via Zoom and the prize winners will be chosen.

Winners will be invited to submit a project abstract to ECCMID 2024.

Rebecca Li speaks at Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy event

Vivli Executive Director, Rebecca Li, spoke at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy event entitled “Data Capture to Measure, Track, and Improve Antibiotic Use” on March 2nd. She took part in the panel discussion for ‘Policy Approaches to Improve Data Capture for Antibiotic Use’ which discussed the need for the expansion of programs to capture antimicrobial resistance surveillance data, and the barriers stakeholders encounter in gathering evidence for novel antibiotics.

Vivli team authors new publication in GARDP’s REVIVE newsletter

Vivli Executive Director Rebecca Li and Antimicrobial Development Consultant Patricia Bradford recently authored a Viewpoint article entitled “Access to industry antimicrobial resistance (AMR) susceptibility surveillance data” in the GARDP REVIVE newsletter. This paper aims to raise awareness of the availability of high-quality AMR susceptibility data collected from surveillance programs by the pharmaceutical industry. These data are freely available and can be requested through the AMR Register by researchers wishing to advance the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

Vivli Executive Director Dr. Rebecca Li Speaking at the PACCARB September Public Meeting (Innovation Spotlight)

Vivli’s Executive Director, Dr. Rebecca Li, spoke at The Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB) Public Meeting on September 13th for the Innovation Spotlight, on the topic “AMR Register – An Innovative platform for sharing industry surveillance data”. Dr. Li spoke alongside other companies with innovations in antimicrobial resistance. View Dr. Li’s slides here.

This meeting of PACCARB aimed to “identify key issues and critical policy gaps through a series of facilitated discussions examining a hypothetical large-scale disease outbreak scenario based on historic examples and estimates of future AMR outbreaks.”

Further information about the meeting can be found here.

Media Coverage and Social Media Update

Media Roundup:

Social Media:

Pablo-David Rojas on Twitter: “Here a valuable and powerful tool, data-driven and very useful to tackle #AntimicrobialResistance”

Nadine Hillock on Twitter: ”Fantastic initiative! 👏👏 AMR data sharing platform for researchers to access resistance data held by industry”

Damiano de Felice on Twitter: “Kudos to @Wellcome_AMR and @VivliCenter.It is great to see that the #AMRregister has become a reality”

CIDRAP-ASP on Twitter: “New interview! @cvdall speaks with Dr @rebeccali2006 about the launch of @VivliCenter’s AMR Register, which allows access to raw antibiotic susceptibility data collected by pharmaceutical and biotech companies”

AMR Action Fund on Twitter: “Great Q&A btwn @cvdall and @VivliCenter’s Rebecca Li about the newly launched AMR Register, which is supported by our portfolio co @VenatorxPharma and several of our investors incl @pfizer, @GSK, @JNJGlobalHealth, @Merck, @SHIONOGI_JP https://cidrap.umn.e”

Pfizer Medical on Twitter: “We’re pleased to lead the way as a founding contributor of antimicrobial surveillance raw data to @VivliCenter AMR Register, enabling key decision makers access to trends in resistance #AMR”

Merck on Twitter: “We are proud to include our SMART surveillance program in the new #AMR Register from @VivliCenter, helping preserve antibiotics for future generations. Learn more: http://merck.us/3zOCApX”

Francesca on Twitter: “Wow it is fantastic to see this becoming reality and with so many contributing companies https://amr.vivli.org @Wellcome_AMR @VivliCenter”

Venatorx Pharmaceuticals on Twitter: “Groundbreaking Data-Sharing Initiative Launches to Increase Understanding of Antimicrobial Resistance. Log on and explore the Register today!! @VivliCenter @GSK @pfizer @Merck @JNJGlobalHealth @SHIONOGI_JP @ParatekPharma @ViatrisInc https://amr.vivli.org

Karla Childers on Twitter: “Congratulations to @VivliCenter for the launch of the AMR register! It was an honor to be part of the event today.”

CIDRAP-ASP on Twitter: “Today, @VivliCenter launched the Antimicrobial Resistance Register, which makes it possible for biopharmaceutical companies to share susceptibility data on infection-causing pathogens for the first time ever in one online platform”

Venatorx on LinkedIn: “ATTENTION: Groundbreaking Data-Sharing Initiative Launches to Increase Understanding of Antimicrobial Resistance”

Jeevan John on LinkedIn: “Insight has partnered again with nonprofit Vivli in its launch of an AMR data-sharing platform to help clinical researchers tackle the problem.”

Health Europa on LinkedIn: “Leading pharmaceutical companies have joined forces to share surveillance data on antibiotic-resistant bacteria to tackle the global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).”

Robert Kane on LinkedIn: “The World Health Organization cautions that people’s growing resistance to antibiotics puts us at risk to future pandemics. Insight’s effort to help nonprofit data-sharing organization Vivli launch a new clinical research platform unites the work of the world’s sharpest researchers looking to solve this issue.”