Papyrus Diagnostics, a startup from the Department bags the first runners-up award at the national AMR idea challenge.
A quarter of the world’s population is expected to develop urinary tract infection (UTI) at least once in their lifetime. Currently, patients that walk into the doctor’s clinic with UTI-like symptoms are often prescribed antibiotics empirically. The standard test that determines the kind of infecting pathogen and its resistance status to various antibiotics takes 2-3 days to complete. Therefore, the clinician does not have enough evidence of whether the antibiotic they are prescribing will treat the infection. Neither do they have rapid tools at their disposal to get this information. Consequently, antibiotics are prescribed empirically. In case, the causative organism is resistant to the prescribed antibiotic, the prescribed antibiotic will be unsuccessful in treating the infection and may lead to further mutation of the organism making it more resistant to the administered antibiotic. This practice of empirical administration of antibiotics is leading to an increasing burden of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) globally. The world needs disruptive tools that can enable the clinician to determine drug sensitivity rapidly, preferably during the patient’s visit to the clinic. Papyrus Diagnostics Pvt. Ltd., a company founded by Prof. Bhushan Toley, has ideated simple paper-based devices that may enable rapid AMR testing of UTIs in under an hour. Papyrus’s proposal presented at the C-CAMP AMR Idea Diagnostics Challenge 2022 was the 1st runner-up in this national idea challenge, which saw more than 100 ideas from across the country.
