Can game theory help detect drug-resistant bacteria?

Amid mounting concerns that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — a global public health threat and a chronic pandemic — will be exacerbated by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a group of researchers have designed software program to identify antimicrobial resistant bacteria.

They did so by applying game theory — an approach that deploys study of mathematical models of strategic interaction among game players.

The team from Washington State University developed the software tool, Prediction of Antimicrobial Resistance via Game Theory (PARGT), that comes with a simple graphic-user interface and can run on operating systems such as Windows, Linux, etc. The findings were published in journal Scientific Reports on July 6, 2020.