Point of Care Diagnostics to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

Deadline: 2019-10-18
Award: $150,000 CAD
Open to: Canadian corporations*

Antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections are a growing public health threat in Canada and around the world. The misuse and over use of antimicrobials in humans and animals is a major contributor to the rapid emergence and spread of AMR infections. There is a need to develop, test and commercialize novel, easy to use, and affordable real-time (point-of-care) detection and diagnostic tools that would allow human and/or animal health care providers, in a hospital, clinical or community setting, to rapidly (ideally minutes to hours) identify pathogens and their antibiotic resistance profiles in order to individually tailor treatment. One of the major barriers to the uptake and sustained use of point-of-care (POC) diagnostics to address AMR is the cost of the individual tools that makes it costly for health care practitioners to provide/use in a community setting. The innovation will fulfil an unmet need in human or veterinary medicine.