Interview with Dr. Michael Shiloh - Part 3: Looking Toward the Future

After asking about the technologies being used now, I wanted to ask what the future of infectious disease research might look like.

How do you see your field evolving over the next five to 10 years?

Michael Shiloh: One area where I think clinical infectious disease will evolve substantially is rapid molecular diagnostics. Ideally, we'll be able to determine not only what organism is causing an infection, but also which antibiotic or antiviral is most likely to treat it, much more quickly than we can today. Right now, if I suspect that a hospitalized patient has a bacterial infection, we may collect a sample and try to grow the organism in the laboratory. It can take several days to identify the organism and determine which antibiotics will work against it. During that time, I may need to treat the patient with one or more antibiotics without knowing exactly what is causing the infection. If rapid diagnostics can give us that information within hours instead of days, we could get patients onto the right treatment much sooner.