Urinary tract infections (UTIs) require 48-72 hours for reliable diagnosis using conventional methods, demanding specialized infrastructure and trained personnel unavailable in rural areas. This diagnostic delay forces patients toward inappropriate over-the-counter antibiotics, leading to recurrent infections and dangerous antimicrobial resistance among uropathogens.
Women are primarily affected (2:1 prevalence ratio vs. men) with 33.54% prevalence in India. Target groups include underserved populations in tier-II cities, towns, and rural areas lacking access to proper diagnostic facilities, plus healthcare providers in 30,000 primary health centers and 6,000 community health centers.
With 150 million UTI cases annually worldwide, delayed diagnosis accelerates antimicrobial resistance development, making future treatments ineffective. Inappropriate antibiotic use increases healthcare costs, prolongs patient suffering, and threatens global health security. Rural populations remain particularly vulnerable without accessible, rapid diagnostic solutions.

Our point-of-care color-based antibiotic susceptibility test delivers results within 3-6 hours directly from clinical urine samples. Requiring no extensive instrumentation or specialized training, it provides 95% sensitivity and 98% specificity, enabling appropriate antibiotic selection at primary healthcare facilities in underserved areas.
Proprietary media formulation enables bacterial growth in 3-6 hours versus 16-18 hours with conventional methods. Unlike existing solutions requiring multiple media, infrastructure, and trained personnel, ours uses single media formulation with color-based results, making it the first truly point-of-care antibiotic susceptibility test.
Success would reduce antimicrobial resistance by promoting antibiotic stewardship, decrease inappropriate over-the-counter medication use, and improve healthcare accessibility in rural areas. At one-tenth current market price, it could serve 36,000+ healthcare centers, create rural employment opportunities, and significantly improve UTI treatment outcomes nationwide.

Current alternatives include conventional urine culture (gold standard requiring 48+ hours, specialized infrastructure), PCR-based AMR gene detection (requiring pure cultures, expensive equipment), and probe-based pathogen identification assays (still needing 16-18 hour pre-culture steps, lacking susceptibility testing capabilities).
Clinical performance evaluation with 218 clinical urine samples demonstrated superior performance metrics: 95% sensitivity and 98% specificity versus in comparison to conventional urine culture' and sensitivity tests. The proprietary media formulation's proven 4-6 hour bacterial growth capability and color-based result interpretation validate technical feasibility and clinical reliability.
Regulatory approval and clinical validation across diverse healthcare settings pose the greatest implementation challenges. Additionally, establishing supply chain distribution to remote rural areas, ensuring quality control consistency, training community health workers effectively, and gaining physician acceptance of a new diagnostic paradigm will require substantial coordination efforts.