About the Authors
- Hajo Grundmann
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* E-mail: Hajo.Grundmann@rivm.nl
Affiliations National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands, Department of Medical Microbiology, University Medical Centre, Groningen, The Netherlands
- David M. Aanensen
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Affiliation Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
- Cees C. van den Wijngaard
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Affiliation National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
- Brian G. Spratt
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Affiliation Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
- Dag Harmsen
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Affiliation Department of Periodontology, University Hospital Münster, Germany
- Alexander W. Friedrich
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Affiliation Institute of Hygiene, University Hospital Münster, Germany
- the European Staphylococcal Reference Laboratory Working Group¶
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¶Membership of the European Staphylococcal Reference Laboratory Working Group is provided in the Acknowledgments.
Competing Interests
DH is one of the developers of the Ridom StaphType software and the SpaServer mentioned in the manuscript. The client software is distributed and sold by the company Ridom GmbH, which is partially owned by him. All other authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Author Contributions
ICMJE criteria for authorship read and met: HG DMA CCvdW BGS DH AWF. Agree with the manuscript's results and conclusions: HG DMA CCvdW BGS DH AWF. Designed the experiments/the study: HG DH. Analyzed the data: HG CCvdW BGS AWF. Collected data/did experiments for the study: HG. Wrote the first draft of the paper: HG. Contributed to the writing of the paper: HG CCvdW BGS DH AWF. Developed the public domain Web-based interactive mapping tool: DMA. Carried out spatial scan statistics: CCvdW. Provided scientific advice, co-developed mapping tools, co-edited manuscript: BGS. Developed the SpaTyper software, co-organised the capacity building workshops, maintained and serviced the SpaServer: DH. Maintained the SeqNet.org database, co-organised the capacity building workshops, responsible for proficiency testing, performed BURP-clustering: AWF.