The rapid rise in increasingly resistant bacteria has become a major threat to public health. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) is crucial in guiding appropriate therapeutic decisions and infection prevention practices for patient care. However, conventional culture-based AST methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive. Therefore, rapid AST approaches exist to address the delayed gap in time to actionable results. There are two main types of rapid AST technologies— phenotypic and genotypic approaches. In this review, we provide a summary of all commercially available rapid AST platforms for use in clinical microbiology laboratories. We describe the technologies utilized, performance characteristics, acceptable specimen types, types of resistance detected, turnaround times, limitations, and clinical outcomes driven by these rapid tests. We also discuss crucial factors to consider for the implementation of rapid AST technologies in a clinical laboratory and what the future of rapid AST holds.

The American Committee on Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers’ Health’s Students/Trainees Leadership Group launched its essay contest in 2025 to encourage the involvement of emerging voices in tropical medicine in key issues shaping the field’s present and future. The following authors won for their essays addressing the following prompt: “Tropical Medicine in the 21st Century” These essays were reviewed by a panel of clinician judges with experience in tropical medicine and writing, and the winning entries reflect both academic excellence and practical insight. Together, the two winning essays reveal the wide scope of tropical medicine, from policy and prevention to diagnosis and treatment, and the shared responsibility to confront these challenges wherever they arise.