The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance selects eight finalists  

The Trinity Challenge has announced eight finalists in its competition aimed at tackling the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The projects in Fiji, India, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Vietnam use data-driven solutions to mitigate the impact of antibiotic-resistant infections.

The eight finalists, selected by a panel of judges from 20 organisations across the world, have proposed a range of bold ideas to fill critical gaps in the understanding of AMR. They were shortlisted from 285 applications from 57 countries.

The Master of Trinity Professor Dame Sally Davies established The Trinity Challenge (TTC) in 2021 in response to the COVID pandemic. TTC supports the creation of data-driven solutions to help protect against global health threats and is currently focused on AMR.

Dame Sally Davies, who is UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance and Chair of TTC, said:

It is inspiring to see a range of ideas from across the world, from generating new data, to providing novel technologies that empower workers and industries to protect the power of antibiotics. This is the kind of innovation we urgently need to turn the tide on AMR.

The winners of the up to £1 million prize and runner-up prize funds will be announced on 6 June 2024.

TTC Director Professor Marc Mendelson said:

Our call was for solutions that would find novel data or novel data uses, to help fill our knowledge gap about antibiotic resistance in community settings in low- and middle-income countries across the One Health spectrum. The range of submissions we received has delivered on that and we are looking forward to working with the winners to bring their plans to life and make an impact in addressing antibiotic resistance.

AMR is predicted to result in 10 million additional deaths a year by 2050 if strategies are not implemented now to prevent antibiotic resistance. The increasing growth of antibiotic resistance is a direct response to misuse and overuse of antibiotics across healthcare systems and the food industry.

Finalist profiles

Fiji

AMR in urban informal settlements of Fiji: insights for policy action

This project will capture first-of-its-kind evidence of AMR prevalence in urban informal settlements in Suva, Fiji, to fill a knowledge gap on this potentially significant reservoir of antibiotic resistance, and the effectiveness of mitigations. This evidence will help establish a national AMR facility and provide evidence-based policy guidance toward Fiji’s National Action Plan.

India

AMRSense: Empowering Communities with a Proactive One Health Ecosystem is a socio-technological innovation to build a network of community health workers in two Indian states and empower these workers with AI-assisted data recording. The data will be integrated with antibiotic sales, consumption and surveillance trends which will allow for predictive analytics that can help tackle AMR.

CHAMP: Community Health Antimicrobial Resistance Platform by Khushi Baby is an antimicrobial stewardship monitoring tool that guides prescriptions, monitors adherence, and educates on antibiotic use, directly at the community level, empowering health workers and improving patient outcomes against AMR.

OASIS: OneHealth Antimicrobial Stewardship for Informal Health Systems transforms rural healthcare by enabling informal rural healthcare providers for humans and animals to monitor personal antimicrobial provision data for infections treated, via the Antibiotic Bandhu (friend of antibiotics) app. By integrating this with regional AMR data, the app will empower providers to adopt responsible antimicrobial practices.

Kenya

Community Surveillance and AI Solutions for AMR Reduction in Kenya

Living Goods and Pendulum Systems’ solution strengthens Kenya’s community-level AMR response by empowering community health workers with enhanced data collection tools to inform targeted interventions; leveraging AI-driven supply chain optimization solutions to improve antibiotics access; and partnering with government to explore the integration of AMR data solutions into government information systems.

South Africa

AMRoots: Grassroots AMR in small scale farming communities will generate new data towards holistic understanding of the development and transmission of antimicrobial resistance in livestock farming communities that are critical for the future food security of sub-Saharan Africa, while integrating scalable and community-led approaches to mitigating AMR in these regions.

Tanzania

SafeMeat establishes a decentralised community-based surveillance network leveraging local slaughterhouses to collect and test meat samples for AMR. An AI platform integrates this crowdsourced data to identify AMR hotspots, generate risk maps, and provide timely alerts, enabling effective monitoring of the meat supply chain.

Vietnam

Farm2Vet: Combatting AMR on the Farm Frontier encourages responsible antibiotic use in food-producing animals by offering subsistence farmers instant, easy, low-cost access to trusted veterinary services for disease diagnosis and treatment advice via the platform. Farm2Vet acts as an effective surveillance platform by collecting data directly from small farmers and veterinary service suppliers.

The Trinity Challenge on Antimicrobial Resistance has been made possible through funding from the Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research, the Institute of Philanthropy empowered by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Patrick J McGovern Foundation, and Wellcome.