Description of Collaborative Activity: |
CURE is a new tool designed to centrally capture and organize real-world information about how healthcare practitioners use existing drugs in novel ways to treat patients with neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), emerging infections, and drug-resistant infections when treatment options are limited or inadequate. It is currently publicly available in “beta” as an open-access website that enables healthcare practitioners throughout the world to contribute to the database by using a simple online form, a smartphone or other mobile device. In addition to submitting their own case reports, practitioners are also able to query and retrieve information from the database.
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are a group of parasitic and bacterial diseases that cause substantial illness for more than one billion people globally. Patients with NTDs, emerging or drug-resistant infections may lack adequate treatment options due to the limited number of drugs approved for these conditions. Out of necessity, healthcare practitioners try to use existing drugs in novel ways to treat these patients. At present, much of this clinical experience, regardless of whether the patient outcomes are positive or negative, is never reported or shared, and the knowledge is therefore lost. |
