Rapid on-site analyte-specific peptide intervention and diversion (RAPID): A new approach to snakebite envenomation management

Current antivenom therapy for snakebite envenomation, relying on polyclonal antivenoms, has significant limitations.Clinicians often face diagnostic uncertainty because the offending snake species is unknown, forcing the use of broadspectrum antivenoms which may lack specificity 1 .Moreover, these antivenoms frequently cause severe adverse reactions, ranging from mild urticaria to life-threatening anaphylaxis 2 .Compounding these clinical issues are logistical failures; antivenom requires an unbroken cold chain for storage and transport, a requirement that is difficult to meet in the remote, resource-poor settings where snakebites most often occur 3 .The significant time delay between the bite and treatment allows irreversible tissue damage to occur.A severe global shortage of effective antivenom persists due to low profitability, leading to substandard products and eroding clinician and patient confidence 4 .High costs, distribution challenges, and a lack of local production capacity render antivenom prohibitively expensive and inaccessible for the rural populations most at risk.This necessitates a fundamental re-evaluation of current strategies 5 .We propose the rapid on-site analyte-specific peptide intervention and diversion system (RAPID), a comprehensive and integrated technological framework designed as a holistic, end-to-end solution to fundamentally disrupt the challenges of snakebite management 6 .Instead of a fragmented process, RAPID connects four technological pillars that guide a patient from the moment of envenomation to the delivery of a precisely tailored therapeutic, replacing empirical guesswork with a data-