AI Tools for Infections Protection

Antibiogo to Fight Against Antibiotic-Resistant Infections

One challenge in the fight against antibiotic-resistant infections in low and middle-income countries has been interpreting antibiograms, the bacterial cultures used to show which antibiotics are effective for a particular bug. Antibiograms require trained microbiologists to interpret them and recommend the best course of treatment, and such specialists are few in these countries. Clinicians treating an infection can wait days for a culture to be read by a far-away specialist; meanwhile, patients get sicker. Another option is to rely on the best guess of a local lab technician, but that can result in giving patients ineffective drugs that can also make the microbe even more resistant.

Antibiogo, a free Android-based AI-enabled phone app that, as its name suggests, reads antibiograms on the go. Developed by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Foundation, it analyzes an image of the culture taken with a phone camera and interprets it based on the same rules used by microbiologists. Antibiogram cultures are made on a plate containing discs of several antibiotics. The app measures the “zones of inhibition”—the patterns of dead bacteria around the discs that show how well each antibiotic fights the microbe—and identifies the best treatment.

Antibiogo takes a burden off lab techs who haven’t been trained to interpret these tests. The group published a paper in Nature showing the app performed as well as specialist human interpreters (“the gold standard”). In a later trial run with general lab techs in Mali, the app corrected 45 percent of their interpretations.

The European Union in 2022 approved Antibiogo as an in-vitro diagnostic device. It is currently being used in MSF labs in Yemen, Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Jordan, and so far has analyzed cultures from about 500 patients. The organization plans to scale up its cooperation with national health authorities in several African countries, starting with Mali, which began using the app in seven of its national labs in September 2023.

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