Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of the world's deadliest and costliest health threats, according to a US Department of Health and Human Services agency. This is promoted, among others, by doctors overprescribing the most widely acting, broad-spectrum antibiotics for days. Every time these powerful antibiotics are used, the bacteria have a chance to develop resistance to them.

One reason for this is that diagnostic tests used to personalise antibiotic therapy typically take three or more days to complete. To combat the crisis, we must maximise the speed with which precision therapies can be prescribed.

With an innovative technology developed by the start-up Selux Diagnostics, this time is reduced to less than 24 hours, and for 99% of cases even to five hours. As a result, physicians are able to prescribe the optimal treatment three to five days earlier, reducing hospital stays and breaking the cycle of antibiotic overuse and resistance.