Short PeRiod IncideNce sTudy of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SPRINT-SARI): research preparedness for pandemics

Description

What does this project mean for future pandemics?

• Infectious disease epidemics and pandemics are regular but unpredictable events.
• Studies of people with infections is essential for pandemic and epidemic research preparedness and critical for decision making by healthcare and public health professionals.
• SPRINT-SARI is a study aiming to provide improved care for people with infection.
• The study will prepare the world to better handle severe outbreaks by providing information to policy-makers, clinicians, and the general public.
• The study will establish pre-approved protocols that can be activated at short notice in the event of an infectious disease emergency.
• SPRINT-SARI will strengthen the global network of sites capable of collecting data of people with infection.

Project details

The objective of SPRINT-SARI is to:

• establish the clinical research response capability with the capacity to rapidly initiate observational data collection during a future outbreak of severe acute respiratory infection (or other infectious syndrome) at participating sites/locations
• decrease the time lag between the onset of an outbreak and the establishment of an evidence base to guide ongoing decision-making
• provide a framework hospitals can use to implement/build research infrastructure and capacity using standardised protocols and case record forms as part of an internationally integrated data collection exercise.

Although SPRINT-SARI is an observational study, the information will provide valuable information about:

• clinical features, complications and other information to clinicians
• the impact on health systems to policy makers.

SPRINT-SARI will:

• facilitate collaboration with disease-specific experts around the world to create modular and scalable (tiered) case report forms for data and sample collection for a number of clinical infectious syndromes, integrated within a single protocol
• ensure preparedness protocols are preapproved for immediate activation and that implementation systems are regularly reviewed by “exercising” this capacity by screening and collecting data on patients with these infectious syndromes for a one week period every year.
• ensure investigator familiarity with data infrastructure through inter-pandemic data collection
• ensure all necessary regulatory approvals and operational systems are in place.

The data will be locally-controlled, with de-identified data centrally-stored, and used for a variety of purposes related to better understanding emerging infections and inform both the clinical and public health response during an outbreak.

Read more about SPRINT-SARI.