Antibiotic resistance (ABR) will have a significant economic impact globally, due to difficulties with surgery and other clinical procedures. ABR will also lead to common health issues becoming fatal, and animal products increasing in cost due to the inability to use antibiotics prophylactically.
To overcome these issues, new antibiotics must be found, as well as alternatives such as bacteriophage therapy or anti-sense oligonucleotides.
Responsible use of antibiotics is also important, helping to stave off resistance for as long as possible. This could include not using antibiotics in agriculture, as well as using clinical genomics (potentially with Nanopore sequencing) to determine the cause of an infection before determining a drug to treat it. Identifying the species causing the infection can allow the most effective drug and dosing regimen to be determined.