Introduction

The past decade has witnessed increasing international momentum for preventing health-care associated infections and antimicrobial resistance. Significant investments in biomedical research on these topics have been made. Despite these efforts, much of the research has not “translated” yet into significant improvements of care at the patient and provider level. A gap remains between published studies of high quality and real-life implementation of best practices for infection prevention.

Scope

The Implementation Academy at the 2013 ICPIC conference provides a unique opportunity to present the best implementation success stories in the field of infection prevention, hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship. It represents the first introduction of such an event to an infection prevention and antimicrobial resistance control meeting and will be an exciting opportunity for all attendees.  Experts from diverse fields will interact during this oral abstract session, culminating in the final presentation and awarding of three “Implementation Awards”, which will be judged by an international expert jury.

Practical issues and adjudication

The Implementation Academy will be first held during the 2013 ICPIC in Geneva and will be clearly identified in the programme. A separate category for the abstract presentations will be provided with details given for the content and attributes to be classified as a participating abstract in this category.

The Implementation Academy will be held at a separate oral abstract session which will include dedicated oral presentations, and a final Awards Ceremony at the closure of this symposium.

The Implementation Academy Session is open to all participants to the meeting. Investigators who wish to include their abstracts in the Implementation Academy session for oral presentation and compete for the “Implementation Awards” must clearly identify the category (“Implementation”) to which they are applying, be prepared for being judged by members of the international jury of the Implementation Academy and attend the dedicated session.

The format of abstract submissions will be identical to the standard submission process but they must be clearly delineated as belonging to the category of the “Implementation Academy”.

Adjudication Attributes

Real-life implementation of evidence-based infection control

Scientific soundness and robust methods

High impact in a measurable and objective manner

Generalizability –  could be applied to different settings and resource health systems