Accurate diagnostic tests are critical to effectively and appropriately triage patients with infectious disease. Many of the most clinically and militarily relevant diseases like malaria or dengue present with non-specific symptoms (fever, malaise, etc), they typically require a broad range of treatments and quarantine strategies to prevent further transmission. In these situations, medical staff often provide treatments based on their estimation of what the patient is likely to have—when these appraisals are incorrect (for example, using antimalarials to treat a viral infection) they can drive the development of antimicrobial resistance to those drugs, degrading their efficacy when their use is indicated.

While effective tools exist for some diseases, they often require expensive, large laboratory equipment with trained technicians operate them and interpret results, rendering them unusable in resource-poor or far-forward environments without easy access to developed healthcare. As such, developing quick, accurate and easy-to-use diagnostic kits targeted to the infectious diseases circulating in within an area of responsibility are a critical component of force health protection.

AFRIMS maintains clinical and field research sites as well as data-sharing partnerships with foreign militaries and governments, public health bodies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations and industry developers across the Southeast Asia and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility in order to develop and test portable, field-ready diagnostic tests across multiple research focus areas.