Development and proof-of-concept validation of a low-cost tropicalized device detecting bacterial growth in equipment-free blood cultures

Invasive bloodstream infections have an important impact on public health in low-resource settings.
The likelihood of positive patient outcomes depends on the timely determination of the pathogen’s
antibiotic susceptibility. Time-to-diagnosis (and thus determination of the antibiotic susceptibility) in
low-resource settings is currently taking too long, partly due to the unavailability of sophisticated
blood cultures automates and the shortcomings of manual evaluation of blood culture bottles.
To deal with this shortcoming, this project is proposed to design, develop and validate an open-access
system which detects bacterial growth in blood cultures bottles by measuring the turbidity of
the growth medium. The goal of the project is to develop a small, portable, low-cost turbidity meter
that is tropicalized and appropriate for use in low-resource settings by non-expert laboratory staff.