Founded in 1971, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international humanitarian not-for-profit organization that provides medical care to those impacted by disasters, conflicts, and epidemics — regardless of country, race, or religion. Operating in challenging and dangerous conditions across the globe, MSF is committed to providing medical care to those with limited access to healthcare as well as raising awareness about global health issues.
Challenge: Expanding access to critical health tech in low-resource countries
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global health threat commonly attributed to the misuse and overprescription of antibiotics, making previously reliable treatments less effective. In 2019, more than 1 million deaths were attributable to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Today, AMR continues to claim over 700,000 lives per year. If no action is taken by 2050, the number of deaths could skyrocket to over 10 million per year.
MSF recognised the urgent need to expand access to antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST), a lab test that helps doctors choose targeted antibiotics to fight bacterial infections rather than broad-spectrum ones. Implementing ASTs is a huge challenge due to their high cost, as well as the lack of bacteriology diagnostic clinics in low and middle income countries.
Solution: An affordable, open-source application built for budget smartphones
To combat AMR, Médecins Sans Frontières created a prototype of Antibiogo — a free, android-based AI app running on a low-cost smartphone. This revolutionary health tech was designed to combine microbe and bacteria data and advanced image recognition software to assist in accurate diagnosis. It allows non-expert lab technicians to measure and interpret ASTs, which aids doctors in prescribing accurate antibiotics to their patients, making it a potentially life-saving tool in countries with limited access to healthcare.
After the rollout of Antibiogo’s initial prototype, MSF engaged Thoughtworks to assess and assist with app development, stability and scalability for the product's official launch.
Antibiogo: Leveraging machine learning to create state-of-the-art health technology
With a pre-planned release on the horizon, Thoughtworks had limited time to familiarize themselves with the Antibiogo architecture and user flows. This involved a great deal of discovery, knowledge transition and handover, all in the short period of six months. During this collaboration, Thoughtworks continued to develop the Android app, supported the integration of the AI model and expert system (rules engine), and successfully released the application for use in clinical research and pilot laboratories. On the machine learning side, the team updated the existing model using datasets from multiple antibiotic brands, enabling the app to analyze sample images and deliver accurate antimicrobial readings.
Several improvements were also made to Antibiogo’s architecture and design to stabilize critical app components and optimize resource usage. This gave the app far greater scalability, future-proofing it to maintain functionality under increased demand. Thoughtworks’ development team also optimized the code base to drastically reduce application build time by over 60%, from over 2 hours to under 45 minutes.
From the beginning, Thoughtworks’ senior management understood our needs and challenges. We are happy to collaborate with a company that shares our principles.
Outcomes: Antibiogo deployed across five countries with integrated EUCAST data
The outcome of this collaboration between MSF and Thoughtworks resulted in two major back-to-back releases of Antibiogo — one supporting clinical research studies, and the other enabling MSF pilot labs across five different countries. This rollout also included:
EUCAST data integration: Antibiogo incorporates the latest European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing criteria to align with current standards.
Greatly improved app reliability: Improving performance and eliminating critical bugs and crashes across the board.
Multiple new features: Gathered across rounds of feedback from previous clinical and summative studies.
Thoughtworks has shown a genuine commitment to our mission and helped us scale Antibiogo quickly and effectively, allowing us to provide our services to the communities that need them the most.
Looking ahead: Scaling Antibiogo for global healthcare impact and clinical reliability
In partnership with Thoughtworks, MSF has now released Antibiogo in more than ten countries and with a target onboarding of 100+ laboratories by 2025. Antibiogo’s test quality, low cost and ease of use, marks a giant leap forward in accessible health tech and combating antimicrobial resistance.
The next phase of Antibiogo’s evolution will see MSF and Thoughtworks work together to scale the application even further. Enhanced machine learning and a suite of AI tools will help reach more laboratories in remote locations, empowering lab technicians to more effectively interpret reports, leading to faster diagnosis and improved patient care.
The use of Antibiogo’s revolutionary image recognition software highlights the growing potential of software assisted medical devices in the healthcare industry, and paves the way for future applications across a range of medical fields.
