Fig. 6

Boxplots of the scores of different key drivers for implementation of pathogen genomics rated by 116 participants, Belgium, 2019. Criteria could be assigned a score from 1 to 5, or participants could indicate the ‘I don’t know’ option. The boxplots show the median score and the interquartile range (grey boxes). The following criteria were included (top to bottom): clinical and/or public health significance, priority with respect to preventing the spread of antimicrobial resistance, local/national/international policy surveillance priorities or obligations, importance of prevention and control programs (e.g. vaccination), utility of WGS for diagnostics and/or treatment decisions (individual patient care), utility of increased resolution to infer relatedness that would not be obtained via conventional methods, availability of high-quality/complete/standardized epidemiological and/or clinical data to provide context to the WGS results, possibility to link genomic data from different sources (food-animal-human-environment), cost-effectiveness (e.g. replacing multiple tests), time-saving compared to conventional testing methods, impact on outcomes for patients and populations (translation into actionable results), availability of WGS typing schemes and reference databases (e.g. for antimicrobial resistance), availability of validated (quality-controlled) WGS workflows (both wet and dry laboratory), availability of expertise to generate, analyze and interpret WGS data, and availability of the appropriate infrastructure (sequence technology, high-performance computing, data storage, etc.).