Fig. 3: Turnaround time of identified antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) technologies overlaid on a conventional AST workflow.

The conventional workflow shows a timeline of the standard steps from specimen collection to final results for blood culture specimens (A). Cultures of urine can be assumed to require at least 24 h less than the conventional workflow shown for blood specimens. The time from specimen collection to final AST readout is shown for commercialized phenotypic platforms (B) and non-commercialized platforms (C). For commercialized phenotypic platforms, the shortest time was taken as the shortest time reported by the company and the longest time was taken from the longest time reported by the company or from a paper in our review which evaluated the platform. For non-commercialized tests, when a test reported a range of time-to-results, the shortest and longest time were recorded, otherwise only the shortest time was recorded. For tests that reported a time to result from positive blood culture, an assumption of 24 h was used to estimate the time from sample collection to the start of the test. For tests that reported a time to result from colony isolation, an assumption of 48 h was used to estimate the time from sample collection to the start of the test. When a test was performed directly from specimen collection, no assumptions of extra time were added to the total turnaround time. One assay was performed directly on blood⁴⁶, while the other direct-from-specimen tests were all performed on urine samples. 41/81 non-commercial phenotypic tests were excluded from this graph because they did not report the time from beginning the test to a minimal inhibitory concentration measurement. Graphics created with BioRender.com.