The 11th annual KILMER Conference, hosted by Johnson & Johnson, prompted conversations about the need to connect the dots for sterility assurance from end-to-end in the product lifecycle and the importance of collaborating to innovate.

This year, the theme for this global forum was “CONTINUITY: Fostering our Future.” In describing the importance of this year’s theme, Joyce Hansen, vice president of Sterility Assurance for Johnson & Johnson and KILMER Conference Chair says “to continue fostering the solutions that will help us solve our sterilization challenges and minimize risk to patients, it is imperative to sustain what is working well, and that we embrace change and support the industries growth while making sure that we develop our talent for the future.”

The KILMER Conference, which was held this year in Athens, Greece, serves as a place to exchange ideas with the brightest minds in sterility assurance and as a network to share best practices. The conference has brought together more than 300 microbiological quality and sterility assurance professionals from industry, academia, government agencies, notified bodies, and healthcare delivery organizations around the world.

During the conference, the participants continued the tradition of sharing their community learning to find solutions to the most challenging infection prevention challenges.

In spirit of the continuity theme, both AAMI President and CEO Pamela Arora and Glenn Wright, COO and president-elect of the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA), also spoke about leveraging their respective association’s resources as leading neutral conveners to host future KILMER Conferences.

“As a long-time supporter of the conference and the home of the KILMER Scholarship and Grant program, AAMI and the AAMI Foundation remain committed to supporting this high-level, high impact work,” Arora says.

She discussed the widening scope of AAMI’s standards development work in the sterilization field and the influence which ideas sparked at the KILMER conference and led by KILMER groups has on this important work. Wright highlighted PDA’s historied involvement with the Conference, and how AAMI and PDA are ideally positioned with their differing focus areas to host future conferences. 

“I can’t stress enough how strongly PDA feels regarding the importance of the KILMER Conference to the industry and the unique nature of its design and content,” Wright says. “PDA, with its 76 years of service to the industry, has and remains a longtime supporter of the KILMER Conference and the KILMER Collaboration groups. It was great to be at the conference in Athens and see so many of my PDA colleagues in attendance. I was especially honored to be present as Maik Jornitz, a very active PDA member and past Chairman of the PDA Board of Directors, was recognized with the KILMER Award.”

KILMER Awards

The KILMER Awards have been presented at each KILMER Conference to recognize significant personal and organizational contributions to the sterility assurance field, leading to improved patient safety.

The 2022 KILMER Award recipients were Michelle Alfa, who received the award for her personal contributions to combat patient infections that develop from processing reusable medical devices in hospital settings, and Maik Jornitz, for his unique contributions to the advancement of aseptic process filter sterilization of sterile products.

Photo: KILMER Conference