How Mykrobe Atlas delivers Genomic Surveillance and Resistance Prediction to combat Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is one of the world’s second-deadliest infectious diseases but drug resistance is what makes it truly dangerous.

Drug-resistant TB takes longer to diagnose, is far more expensive to treat, and exposes patients to harsher drugs with worse side effects.

Instead of a six-month course with low-cost medication, treatment can stretch up to two years, involve toxic second-line drugs. Even then, the chance of full recovery is much lower.

Each mismanaged case risks spreading resistant strains and drains public health budgets in avoidable repeat care.

When surveillance breaks down and frontline teams are left guessing

Even with advanced research, most public health systems still lack the tools to act on genomic data in real time.

This means surveillance fails and outbreaks spread unchecked.

At the same time, frontline clinicians are flying blind.

Without tools to support both field response and clinical accuracy, resistance grows, treatment slows, and public systems are forced to absorb the cost.

Introducing Mykrobe Atlas

Mykrobe Atlas was built to close the gap between genomic science and real-world response.

It’s the result of a long-term partnership with leading researchers. First with the University of Oxford, then with the European Bioinformatics Institute. Shaped over seven years of phased collaboration.

Each phase was driven by funding availability and focused on delivering the next most important priority.  From early prototypes to national-scale surveillance tools, we built, tested, and evolved the platform in step with global needs.

Atlas gives public health teams and frontline clinicians the tools they need to detect outbreaks early and guide effective treatment, even in high-burden, low-resource settings.

How we delivered Mykrobe Atlas

Discover

We started with deep, user-centred research to understand the barriers to accurate, timely tuberculosis response not just in theory, but in the field.

That included a research trip to Mumbai, supported by the Foundation for Medical Research and Hinduja Hospital, where we saw firsthand how TB affects patients and healthcare teams in high-burden settings.

We spoke with clinicians, researchers, and public health teams to uncover the critical gaps:

• Outbreak response was slow and reactive
• Resistance data was fragmented or hard to access
• Point-of-care tools lacked genomic intelligence
• Most platforms weren’t built for the field, or the people using them

We mapped the real workflows, environments, and infrastructure constraints that would shape every decision ahead.

The insight was clear: To make an impact, the platform needed to be fast, intuitive, and usable across a spectrum of contexts from national labs to mobile clinics.

Define

With insight from the field and lab in hand, we shaped the foundations for a platform that could scale globally and support real-time decision-making.

We worked closely with the teams at the University of Oxford and the European Bioinformatics Institute to prioritise what mattered most across research, surveillance, and clinical use.

That meant defining:

• User pathways for researchers, clinicians, and public health analysts
• System architecture to handle large-scale genomic data securely and efficiently
• Visual identity to create a cohesive, trusted brand
• Design vision grounded in real-world user journeys
• Feature scope by defining product backlogs and cost models to enable focused delivery and funding decisions

We worked in agile sprints, moving with the pace of available funding and global health priorities, always focused on the next most valuable outcome.

Develop

Once the design vision was set, we brought the platform to life with focused, modular development.

• Design system: We built a reusable component library for consistent, scalable interface delivery
• UI development: We delivered both desktop and web apps, tailored to different user contexts and access levels
• APIs and pipelines: We developed secure APIs, a powerful search interface, and integrations with genomic processing pipelines
• Resistance engine: We implemented the logic for predicting drug resistance from whole-genome data
• Similarity engine: We built tools for sample comparison, outbreak clustering, and mutation tracking

Every feature was built with usability, performance, and future scale in mind without compromising the needs of field teams or high-throughput labs.

Deliver

Delivery focused on real-world usability, system readiness, and confidence in launch.

• Testing: We validated functionality across devices, browsers, and user environments
• User testing: We ran task-based testing with public health and clinical users to refine flows and language
• Data prep and QA: We supported sequencing data clean-up, format validation, and library upload
• Infrastructure review: We ensured cloud infrastructure was secure, scalable, and field-ready
• Launch: We handed over a working platform, in active use, with a clear pathway for future expansion

The result was a trusted, research-backed system that delivers speed, accuracy, and scale in the fight against tuberculosis.

The Impact

Mykrobe Atlas was built to demonstrate what’s possible when genomic research is turned into a usable, scalable product.

The platform has proved its value as a research tool  and laid the foundation for future applications in national TB programmes and global disease monitoring.

What If Your Platform Could Deliver This Kind of Impact?

Mykrobe Atlas worked because it was grounded in science, shaped by users, and built to meet real-world constraints.

If you’re developing a platform with the potential to improve public health, transform research, or deliver critical insight at scale we can help make it real.