More than 700,000 people die each year from drug-resistant infections. A large part of the cause is simple: clinicians prescribe without a diagnostic answer to guide them.
A slow-moving emergency
Antimicrobial-resistant infections are responsible for over 700,000 deaths annually worldwide, a figure projected to reach 10 million per year by 2050 if current trends continue. The drivers are complex, but one is unambiguous and addressable: empirical prescribing.
In India, an estimated 80% of antibiotic prescriptions in community settings are empirical — issued on clinical judgement without microbiological confirmation. Without a test, a broad-spectrum antibiotic is the rational hedge for an individual patient, even as that collective behaviour accelerates resistance for everyone.
Diagnostics as the intervention
Faster, more accessible susceptibility information — even provisional — would meaningfully change prescribing decisions at the point of care. The bottleneck is that conventional microbiology requires culture, time, and laboratory infrastructure that most frontline settings do not have.
BIQADX is researching whether AI-assisted optical observation of bacterial growth dynamics can surface earlier, more informative signals than conventional endpoint methods — bringing a usable answer closer to the moment the prescribing decision is actually made.
BactoSnap is at concept and research stage. No device has been built and no clinical performance has been demonstrated. Nothing here constitutes a claim of susceptibility-testing accuracy or organism identification.