The future is now: our experience starting a remote clinical trial during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 a pandemic on February 11, 2020. This organism causes COVID-19 disease and the rapid rise in cases and geographic spread strained healthcare systems. Clinical research trials were hindered by infection control measures discouraging physical contact and diversion of resources to meet emergent requirements.

Testing the feasibility of operationalizing a prospective, randomized trial with remote cardiac safety EKG monitoring during a pandemic.

Background: The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious. Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2. The FDA authorized emergency use of HCQ against COVID-19.

Increasing Babesiosis in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 2008-2017.

Tick-borne illnesses are increasing but are often underreported. Few cases of babesiosis have been reported from Pennsylvania. Our 4-hospital system in southeastern Pennsylvania saw a rise in cases from 7 or fewer yearly in 2008-2014 to 26 cases in 2015.

Impact of an antimicrobial stewardship intervention on shortening the duration of therapy for community-acquired pneumonia.

Background: Initial management of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) has been a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services performance measure for a decade. We hypothesized that an intervention directed at management of CAP that assesses areas not covered by the performance measures-treatment duration and antimicrobial selection after additional microbiology data are available--would further improve CAP management.

Methods: We performed a single-center, prospective study to compare management of adult inpatients with presumed CAP before (from 1 January 2008 through 31 March 2008) and after (from 1 February 2010 through 10 May 2010) an intervention consisting of education and prospective feedback to teams regarding antibiotic choice and duration.

Round-robin evaluation of a solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatographic method for reliable determination of trace level ethylene oxide in sterilized medical devices.

Medical devices that are sterilized with ethylene oxide (EtO) retain small quantities of EtO residuals, which may cause negative systemic and local irritating effects, and must be accurately quantified to ensure non-toxicity. The goal of this round-robin study is to investigate the capability of a novel solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatographic (SPME-GC) method for trace-level EtO residuals analysis: three independent laboratories conducted a guided experiment using this SPME-GC method, in assessing method performance, ruggedness and the feasibility of SPME fibers. These were satisfactory across the independent laboratories, at the 0.