Utilizer awarded €600K to develop advanced UTI Diagnostic

Utilizer (Sweden) was awarded ~€600K by Eurostars in the March 2025 round for their project, UTI-CARE: Pioneering advanced Point-of-Care Urinary Tract Infection Diagnostics towards Responsible Antibiotic Use. We heard from Sofia Bertling, CEO & Founder of Utilizer, about the award and collaboration with Catalyze towards the successful submission.

Utilizer is advancing rapid, reliable diagnostics for urinary tract infections

Utilizer AB, was founded in 2021 as a spin-out company from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Utilizer is advancing rapid, reliable diagnostics for urinary tract infections (UTIs), one of the most common bacterial infections in Europe, with between 50-60% of women experiencing a UTI in their lifetime. The company has miniaturised culture-based bacterial detection into a dipstick format powered by a highly sensitive, quantitative digital bioassay. Using only a smartphone for readout, the test detects and quantifies bacteria in the clinically relevant range without costly instruments or specialised staff.

This decentralised approach enables accurate UTI testing in primary care, elderly care, and even at home, shortening time to result and supporting better treatment decisions while helping to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use. Misdiagnosis is a common issue, resulting in 40-60% of unnecessary antibiotic treatments.

Sofia shares more on Utilizer’s mission:

“Utilizer innovates products for moving clinically relevant diagnostics closer to patients and contributes to the digital healthcare revolution. Utilizer’s vision is to change management of bacterial infections from today’s empirical treatments to rapid and correct treatment based on proof. Utilizer supports healthcare efficiency by saving time for doctors and streamlining patient flow towards primary care/web doctors and decentralised settings.”

Utilizer’s €1.1M Eurostars project, UTI-CARE

Through the Eurostars-funded UTI-CARE project, Utilizer will deliver Utilizer-AST, a cost-efficient rapid point-of-care in vitro diagnostic that combines bacterial detection and species identification with antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) in a single workflow.

Building on their existing prototype platform, UTI-CARE will integrate newly designed AST features and finalise the technology to accurately identify and quantify the five most common uropathogens (E. coli, K. pneumoniae, P. mirabilis, E. faecalis, S. saprophyticus) and determine their resistance profiles within the same working day (~6 hours). By the project’s end, Utilizer-AST will be clinically validated and ready to pursue CE certification under In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation.

Joining Utilizer in the project are Karolinska Institutet (DE) and M2 Automation (DE).

Sofia remarks on the Eurostars award, “The funding enables us to get access to relevant players to develop the best product for the market in shortest possible time.”

Collaboration with Catalyze

Catalyze supported Utilizer in the development and submission of their successful Eurostars application, providing grant writing and programme alignment to clearly articulate the project’s objectives, clinical value, and impact. This collaboration helped position Utilizer-AST for a strong evaluation and smooth path toward clinical validation and market readiness.

Sofia comments, “Catalyze’s support gave us a tremendous focus in the application work and coordinated the other participants, saving time for us to focus on what we do best in our small team.”

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Learn more about Utilizer