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FORNY20-FORNY2020

KVAL: Rapid-Diag: Decision-making tool for rapid diagnostics of infection and antibiotic resistance

Alternative title: Rapid-Diag: Beslutningsverktøy for rask diagnostisering av infeksjon og antibiotikaresistens

Awarded: NOK 0.50 mill.

Project Manager:

Project Number:

322797

Project Period:

2021 - 2022

Funding received from:

The Inland University of Applied Sciences and Klosser Innovation AS, will in the Rapid-Diag project introduce a novel and rapid way to detect infection and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in patient samples. The method is based on bioinformatic analysis of DNA sequence data. In combination with new and faster DNA sequencing methods, the aim is that the health care professional shall be able to get an answer within hours. Rapid-Diag aims to develop a decision-making tool that can answer the questions; what type of infection the patient has, what resistances does the pathogen have, what is the ideal treatment (choice of antibiotic) for the infection. The decision-making tools algorithms will be improved with artificial intelligence methods, making it fast and accurate. The COVID-19 epidemic has shown how critical it is to have rapid diagnostics for infection and surveillance. As, a significant challenge for clinicians managing infection is to precisely identify those patients who should receive antibiotics and those who should not. This is due to physicians not diagnosing patients accurately in realtime, leading to either prescription of antibiotics for viral infections or the prescription of broad-spectrum drugs that should ideally be kept in reserve.

The estimated burden of AMR infections in the EU/EEA is similar to the combined burdens of influenza, tuberculosis, HIV and has risen in 2007-2015. Rapid-Diag is at the cutting edge of science and technology development as it opens a realistic path toward a rapid diagnosis of infections in pharmacies, primary care, and hospitals for prescribing the optimal and most suitable antibiotic. This will enable creating a new synergistic method and diagnostic system for rapid and high throughput diagnostics technologies able to identify several bacteria in line with the WHO priority list. Rapid diagnostics will ultimately lead doctors to optimal treatment while enhancing patients? lives to treat patients with a targeted antibiotic. The rapid diagnostics kits global market is expected to grow at +8% in the next 5 years. The growth factors include the increasing number of government initiatives for diagnosing infectious diseases and the rising need for fast detection of diseases.

Funding scheme:

FORNY20-FORNY2020