According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one-third of antibiotic use occurs in situations when it is unnecessary or not the appropriate treatment. This overuse of antibiotics drives an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which the WHO classifies among the top ten threats to global health. In addition, the EMEA is currently reporting antibiotic shortages for adults and children alike in nearly all European countries. However, if physicians do not prescribe antibiotics to patients with a genuine need quickly, then there is an increased risk of severe infection, sepsis, and even death. 

Currently, the majority of general practitioners (GPs), and pediatricians (PEDs) send samples to an external lab for analysis – a process that can take hours or even days. This leaves physicians faced with a difficult, time-sensitive decision. On the one hand, they want to ration antibiotic use to only those patients who genuinely need and benefit from them. On the other hand, they do not want to risk delaying antibiotics to patients who genuinely require them. Unfortunately, this means doctors must often either make this decision without adequate information or delay their decision while waiting for test results.

To tackle these issues the team invented METIS, an AI-powered PoC solution for identifying the antibiotic need right away at GPs or PEDs offices. 

METIS measures multiple key proteins to gain insight into how the patient’s immune system is responding to an infection with a simple test device, similar to lateral flow tests that we are all familiar with from COVID-19 testing. As METIS pools multiple sources of information, the test result itself is not human readable, but a quick picture with the related smartphone app enables our AI-algorithms to process the results and provide GPs and PEDs with a simple antibiotic recommendation.

Importantly, all this takes place within five minutes and does not require sending samples offsite. Furthermore, METIS does not require any specialized hardware, making it perfect for every outpatient setting.

The interdisciplinary team from emergency and laboratory medicine has spent years evaluating current and next-generation infection tests clinically and in patient settings, concluding none meets the requirements of GPs and PEDs. They have built up a biobank and database of samples AI expertise, so the team is perfectly positioned to bring infectious disease diagnostics to the next level.