Development and clinical evidence generation for a rapid, cost-effective, point of care antibiotic susceptibility test for urinary tract infections

Research Question Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve and no longer respond to medicines. There were 4.95 million AMR-associated deaths in 2019 and by 2050, AMR could kill more than cancer and diabetes [1].

A key strategy to combat bacterial AMR is antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) to identify optimum antimicrobial treatment for infections. However, current gold-standard AST takes \>2 days, relying upon overnight incubations.

Prolonged turnaround time can result in inappropriate prescription with broad-spectrum or ineffective antibiotics, risking treatment failure, prolonged hospital stays, secondary infections (e.g. C. difficile) increasing AMR rates, and a range of poor patient-related outcomes.

The proposed NIHR i4i PDA project, a collaboration between Microplate Dx, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals (NuTH) NHS Foundation Trust, the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Diagnostic and Technology Evaluation and University of Glasgow (UoG)/Digital Health Validation Lab (DHVL)/NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (NHSGGC) will improve AST through rapid, cost-effective, in-vitro diagnostics at the point-of-care (POC).

Background The award-winning SME Microplate Dx (MDx) has developed and validated a unique proof-of-principle AST device, with NHSGGC and NU/NuTH supporting with clinical evidence generation and care pathway analysis.

The rapid, affordable, AST platform, 'RapidPlateTM', performs AST directly from patient samples and provides personalised recommendations of appropriate antibiotics to use for bacterial or fungal infections, all