Orchid Pharma to collaborate with hospital body CAHO to counter AMR

Orchid Pharma on Monday announced its collaboration with the Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organisations (CAHO) to initiate hospital assessments and nationwide prescription audits to counter antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

 

The collaboration aims to tackle AMR in India by focusing on tier 2 and tier 3 cities, bridging the gap between awareness and action, and ensuring sustainable AMR interventions.

 

Commenting on the partnership, Rajnish Rohatgi, chief executive officer of Orchid AMS, the AMR solution division of Orchid Pharma, said that with CAHO, the company is addressing three segments.

 

“One is improvements that tier 1 hospitals would like to make in their own existing AMR program. This will be done through iComply, CAHO’s assessment tool,” he said.

 

He added that the second segment involves adopting tier 2 hospitals, where big hospitals assist smaller units in improving their infection control practices and antimicrobial stewardship programs (AMSP).

 

“The third is to educate patients and their attendants or visitors on AMR,” Rohatgi told Business Standard.

 

The collaboration also entails Orchid and CAHO conducting a nationwide prescription audit to identify deviations from prescription guidelines and their causes. “This will be the first-ever such national exercise that will help in understanding patterns of prescriptions,” Rohatgi added.

 

Explaining the program’s implementation, Dr Prabhu Vinayagam, medical advisor, Orchid AMS, said that one of the major plans envisioned is an AMSP program, where Orchid’s team will work with hospitals to implement the plan.

 

“We are doing a pilot in three hospitals currently, in Bombay, Chennai, and Delhi NCR. This pilot will collect and analyse data for six to nine months, helping us identify challenges before implementing the AMSP program in those hospitals,” he told Business Standard.

 

He added that once successfully implemented, the program would be expanded to 200 more hospitals. “We will then ask these hospitals to adopt tier 2 nursing homes, sharing the expertise gained from the initial implementation,” he said.

 

Orchid Pharma also announced a seed capital investment of Rs 1 crore each towards the development of two technologies: a point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tool for outpatient general practitioners to assess bacterial infections, and rapid culture and sensitivity tests to deliver results in less than 12 hours.

 

While the POC tool aims to provide quicker assessments of bacterial infections to guide immediate treatment decisions, the ID-ST culture solution can significantly reduce the time required for empiric treatment decisions in intensive care unit (ICU) settings, improving patient outcomes while curbing unnecessary antibiotic use.

 

The Chennai-based pharma company also announced a commitment to allocate 1 per cent of sales from ORBLICEF™—its patented new molecule Cefepime-Enmetazobactam—towards AMR-related initiatives, supporting research, awareness, and capacity-building efforts across India.

 

Commenting on the announcements, Rohatgi said, “Through our partnership with CAHO and the decision to set up a fund for AMR, we are taking firm steps that are a testament to our strong resolve to address the mammoth challenge of AMR.”