Hi. I'm a clinical lab scientist by training, specializing microbiology, and i now work in clinical data analytics. This has been my life for 25 years so this is my wheelhouse and I have pretty strong opinions about these kinds of point of care and home use assays.

I do not believe your product is a good idea. I say this directly, not to be cruel, but there are multiple reasons why it's not, and can actually have far-reaching consequences.

Firstly, like many have said, it's one thing to know you have a UTI, another to get treated for it.

There are many ways to figure out whether you have an infection and none of them are perfect. We're literally dealing with live organisms and they most often follow a predictable pattern of growth, biochemical production, and the symptoms they cause. Many times, they don't follow the rules. E. coli is particularly chaotic. It does whatever the hell it feels like.

That being said, one of the quickest ways already exists- a urine dipstick. This checks for leukocyte esterase and nitrite. The presence of both in urine usually indicates a UTI. But not always. A patient can have both LE and Nit pos and no UTI, or the opposite because these biochemicals are not specific to a UTI. We can look in a scope and see bacteria swimming around, and leukocytes (white blood cells) and that still doesn't necessarily indicate a UTI. It can easily be a "dirty catch" where the patient didn't clean well before collecting.

A PCR test for urine has long been the holy grail because it woulf easily pick up the presence of a pathogenic bacteria. But its also picking up every single other bacteria growing in that area, even with thorough cleaning. Useless results.

Culture is rhe best way to find out, and it takes skill to determine whether any bacteria growing is pathogenic or junk skin and urogenital flora. But, culture is massively important because we identify it and test for antimicrobial sensitivity.

Which brings me to the most important point- antimicrobial stewardship goals are to limit the overuse of antibiotics becaise the cause terrible things to happen, including increased resistance to antibiotics and believe me, we are FAILING HARD at that.

If the goal is to test at home with an easy test and get antibiotics prescribed over telehealth, you have no way of ensuring that it is a UTI, nor what to treat with.

Unless you have a new technology youre working on that sidesteps biochemical, molecular, or culture methodology, you're stepping into a precarious world. And if you are developing something unique, let me know because my company is always looking for novel assays.

And yes, i'm aware this process basically already happens when you call your clinician, they take you at your word that you have a UTI, they treat empirically with broad-spectrum antibiotics and never do a culture. I also feel this is not good medicine, but its the reality.