By Mike Hollan

The platform utilizes standards set forth in a recently published document from the CDC.
After years of collaborating with hospitals, Magnolia Medical has launched a new digital platform designed to prevent sepsis misdiagnosis.1 The platform, Magnolia Analytics, was designed with the CDC’s recently published Blood Culture Contamination guidelines in mind.

The main addition to the guidelines is a new step utilizing initial specimen diversion devices, which Magnolia specializes in.

CDC notes that reducing sepsis misdiagnosis is important as it can play a key role in reducing the amount of needlessly prescribed antibiotics, which can then further play a role in reducing instances of antibiotic resistance.

In a press release, Magnolia Medical co-founder and CEO Greg Bullington said, “In response to our customer's clear unmet needs, we developed Magnolia Analytics as a custom, exclusive solution to support our hospitals in achieving and sustaining their blood culture contamination rates in line with the new benchmarks established by CDC and CLSI. Truly solving the sepsis testing accuracy problem requires a combination of technology and technique. The continued adoption of Steripath and Magnolia Medical's Mission to ZERO program at nearly 500 hospitals and healthcare systems to date across the U.S. speaks to the impact of our technology solution. The addition of Magnolia Analytics enables transparent access to performance monitoring for hospital leadership."

Bullington continued, “Magnolia Analytics is an essential part of our Mission to ZERO solution, providing clinicians with confidence regarding the accuracy of blood culture results while giving our customers peace of mind that they will continually achieve validated, measurable, and sustained returns on their Steripath investment.”

This is Magnolia’s latest efforts to improve the accuracy of blood culture results. In November 2023, the company issued a press release detailing a new study on antimicrobial resistance.2 According to the study, this issue is one of the most serious health threats on the planet and can cause up to 10 million deaths per year. Magnolia used the release to emphasize the importance of accurate blood test results.

In a press release, Magnolia Medical’s Tammy Johnson, RN and AVP, said, “For patients with bloodstream infection symptoms, diagnostic accuracy can eliminate the clinical and treatment uncertainty caused by false-positive findings. Patients are therefore not needlessly exposed to unnecessary antibiotics in the first place. If they do have an infection, they can receive targeted antibiotic therapy earlier, reducing the risk for the development of antibiotic-resistant organisms. We recently completed a survey of over 1,000 Americans that highlighted the public and medical community's concern with the issue of AMR."

In the same press release, Bullington said, “We strongly support the WHO's initiatives to promote evidence-based best practices to reduce the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. Our Steripath solution has helped hospitals across the U.S. achieve their quality improvement initiatives to significantly improve sepsis testing accuracy by reducing blood culture contamination. Imagine if 40% of cancer patients received chemotherapy unnecessarily because of a false-positive cancer diagnosis. That's exactly what is happening with the current state of sepsis false-positive diagnoses. Our mission is to eliminate the misdiagnosis of sepsis and by doing so, stave off the pace of AMR by reducing unnecessary antibiotic usage at its source."