The rise of hospitalists: an opportunity for infectious diseases investigators

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Despite the essential role played by infectious diseases specialists in patient care, public health, cost-containment, and biomedical research, the field has a substantially higher percentage of vacant positions than other medicine sub-specialties. While much has been written about what this disturbing trend means for patient care, comparatively little attention has been focused on the dire implications for clinical research and the development of novel anti-infective therapy.

Areas covered: We examine the ways that hospitalists and infectious disease specialists might collaborate to study emerging diagnostic platforms, novel antimicrobial agents, and strengthen antimicrobial stewardship programs to improve the delivery of high-quality health care. Through the use of PubMed, the manuscript reviews existing collaborations as well as those that might develop in the years to come.

Expert commentary: In this paper, we propose potential strategies to confront this emerging problem, focusing on novel collaborations with the hospitalist – the specialist in inpatient medicine – to bolster the pipeline of funding for clinical infectious diseases investigators.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitalist
• clinical research
• stewardship
• public health
• cost-containment

Declaration of interest

M McCarthy has served as a paid consultant to Allergen. T.J Walsh receives research grants for experimental and clinical antimicrobial pharmacotherapeutics from Astellas, Cubist, Theravance, the Medicines Company, Allergen, Novartis, Merck and Pfizer. He has served as a consultant to Astellas, Actavis, ContraFect, Draid, iCo, Novartis, Methylgene, SigmaTau, and Trius. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The manuscript was not funded.