Round table discussion: Dry surface biofilms – how standardisation could support biofilm research and industry innovation

Standard method development takes considerable time and resources, but can offer/enable tangible benefits to industry and academics. There are numerous different organisations, committees and groups interested in developing methods that include biofilm (e.g. ISO, ASTM, IBRG, AMPP). Whilst there are clear benefits to having critical mass when developing standards, there exists many obstacles including:

• Different approaches/philosophies to standardisation
• Different discipline norms/approaches to biofilm
• Ensuring methods are reproducible and repeatable
• Duplication of efforts/redundancy in different groups/sectors
• Understanding stakeholders and their requirements

This session will offer perspectives on these challenges from leading standard setting groups via short presentations. Following these, round-table discussions will focus on challenges presented by biofilms, and how the development and deployment of antibiofilm technology can be further enabled and supported by future biofilm standardisation.