Imagine trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the needle is a tiny amount of bacteria in a child's lung. Since traditional tests often fail, this project creates a scoring system—like a medical checklist—to help doctors decide who needs treatment based on symptoms and X-rays. It then puts this checklist into a digital app to make sure every clinic in remote areas follows the same life-saving rules.
Childhood TB is severely underdiagnosed because traditional tests don't work well for children, leading to 250,000 deaths. There is a critical lack of standardized, easy-to-use tools for clinicians in low-resource settings to make accurate treatment decisions.
A set of validated Treatment Decision Algorithms (TDAs) and a digital Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) for TB diagnosis in children.
If you are a software company dealing with low diagnostic accuracy in rural clinics — this project developed a Clinical Decision Support System that digitizes treatment decision algorithms. This allows for rapid and uniform treatment decisions at primary health center levels.
If you are a medical device company dealing with the paucibacillary nature of childhood TB — this project developed validated scoring algorithms that integrate chest X-rays and clinical features. This provides a clear pathway for when to trigger treatment in the absence of high-sensitivity tools.
If you are a consultancy dealing with the 44% reporting rate of paediatric TB — this project developed a programmatic pilot and clinical mentoring tools. These tools help strengthen clinical skills and treatment capacity at district hospital levels.
Based on available project data, no specific commercial price is listed, though the project received an EU contribution of EUR 5,299,965 for development and validation.
Yes, the project is designed for integration into national policies and clinical curricula across high-burden countries, utilizing digital innovations for wide deployment.
Based on available project data, specific IP or licensing agreements are not mentioned; the focus is on updating WHO policy and operational handbooks.
The project specifically aims to strengthen district information systems to collect individual data for program monitoring and supervision by national TB programs.
The project period runs from 2023-04-01 to 2027-03-31.
The consortium is heavily research-oriented with 7 universities and 2 research institutes, but it includes 1 industry partner and 3 other organizations across 6 countries (DE, FR, MZ, UK, ZA, ZM). This mix ensures a strong academic foundation for the meta-analysis while providing the necessary field access in high-burden countries like Mozambique and Zambia to test the digital tools.
Contact Universite de Bordeaux regarding the Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) validation
Contact us to explore licensing opportunities for the TDA-based digital tools.
