Professor Peleg receives AAHMS Fellowship

Professor Anton Peleg was recently elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (AAHMS).

Professor Peleg is an internationally recognised expert in antimicrobial resistance.

His contributions to infection-immunity research, clinical trials, prevention of outbreaks, device infections and microbial genomics has been a driving force behind a number of guidelines globally.

“I’m really honoured to be joining one of the major learned academies for health and medical research in Australia,” he said.

Professor Peleg and his team from The Alfred’s Department of Infectious Diseases were also recently awarded $3.4 million from the Medical Research Future Fund for their project: Genomics, Digital Health and Machine Learning: the SuperbugAi Flagship.

Professor Peleg said the project will integrate the most transformative technologies in healthcare; genomics, electronic healthcare data and artificial intelligence, in order to diagnose, treat and prevent antimicrobial resistance in hospitals and the healthcare system.

“This combination of transformative technologies in medicine provides us with a unique opportunity to develop the future of healthcare – a smart, learning healthcare system that leverages the tens of thousands of data points per patient and infecting pathogen to help predict treatment responses and patient outcomes,” he said.

The research, which will be heavily based at The Alfred, also aims to create a tracking and response system to lead to earlier detection of superbugs, personalised treatment for patients and prevention of outbreaks.

“It’s a project that’s going to push boundaries on what we do in healthcare and how we apply new technologies to understand superbugs, the way they infect humans, and the way they are transmitted in a hospital system.

“The Idea is that it will have a major impact on reducing and preventing superbug infections and spread.”