Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD): Solving the Puzzle of Infectious Diseases
Advanced Molecular Detection (AMD) represents a major enhancement of CDC’s current microbiology and bioinformatics capabilities to find and stop deadly infectious disease outbreaks that threaten every American every day.
AMD at CDC would allow experts in infectious disease laboratory science, epidemiology and bioinformatics to join forces like never before to go from a hunch to certainty in record time to prevent illness and save lives.
The Disease Threat
Highly-resistant pathogens in health care settings, killer bacteria that jump from animals to humans, and new harmful pathogens emerging create constant concern.
- CDC estimates that 1 in 6 Americans—or 48 million people—get sick from contaminated food each year—costing the United States $77 billion per year in health care treatment, workplace, and other economic losses.
- Each year the flu costs businesses approximately $10.4 billion [PDF - 4.22MB] in direct costs for hospitalizations and outpatient visits for adults. CDC needs to detect patterns more precisely for better vaccines.
- Five killer bacteria (and counting) are nearly resistant to all available drug treatments.
The AMD Investment
Investing in AMD would bring the U.S. public health system a more precise and accurate means to
- find smoldering disease outbreaks we are missing now
- find disease outbreaks faster to protect communities
- stop threats in our food supply
The AMD Initiative
With support through the AMD initiative, CDC will be able to take back the advantage in controlling infectious diseases at national and state levels by:
- Reducing diagnostic costs
- Locating germs more rapidly
- Refining new technologies to work for public health
- Training others to use new tools to prevent and stop disease outbreaks
When combined with enhanced laboratory and computing (i.e., bioinformatics) capacities, these new technologies are revolutionizing our ability to detect and respond to infectious disease threats. With full AMD capacity, CDC will be able to detect outbreaks sooner and respond more effectively, saving lives and reducing costs.
- Page last reviewed: May 1, 2013
- Page last updated: May 1, 2013
- Content source:
- Office of the Associate Director for Communication, Digital Media Branch, Division of Public Affairs
- Page maintained by: Office of the Associate Director for Communication, Digital Media Branch, Division of Public Affairs