Bacterial infection diagnostics are crucial for ensuring accurate and prompt determination of patient infection status, identifying the infection-causing pathogen, and are critical to the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR). When a bacterial infection is suspected, but suitable diagnostic tools are delayed or unavailable, clinicians often resort to empiric prescriptions of broad-spectrum antimicrobials, which may be less effective, unnecessary, and can contribute to AMR and poorer patient outcomes. Diagnostics are particularly important for the appropriate use of newer antimicrobial agents. Clinicians may hesitate to prescribe newer agents, even when they are highly effective, due to a lack of susceptibility information.3 Diagnostic limitations can undermine the marketability of new antimicrobial products, leading to hesitation to invest in the next generation of necessary therapeutics. Advanced diagnostics that use molecular, genetic, or novel detection technologies provide faster, more accurate identification of bacterial infections than traditional, culture-based methods and are becoming more available. But access to these diagnostics is still limited and may vary by healthcare setting. The primary objective of this study was to survey the published literature regarding the availability and use of diagnostics for managing bacterial infections in the United States, and the barriers to deployment and uptake of diagnostic testing in various healthcare settings. Another aim of the study was to investigate available data sources that can be used to quantify the extent of use and gaps in adoption of bacterial infection diagnostics.
