For many children, and plenty of adults, swallowing tablets is hard. Ready-made syrups are often unavailable, poorly palatable, or impractical in low-resource settings, and ad-hoc crushing leads to mess, dose loss, and inaccuracy. When TB Alliance developed child-friendly forms of first-line TB treatments, it developed XTEMP-R to solve that everyday problem. XTEMP-R enables quick, hygienic preparation of small-volume suspensions at home – without relying on pharmacy services. It’s a soft, leak-resistant silicone tool with volume markings and a tight cap; caregivers add water, drop in tablets, and disperse by squeezing and shaking, then dose directly or via a syringe adapter.
A recent qualitative study in South Africa followed caregivers, children, and health workers as they used XTEMP-R in daily life. After brief instruction, users reported that the tool replaced crushing pills with a simpler routine and more accurate dosing, echoing clinicians’ view that it’s “ideal” compared with pestle-and-mortar methods. The device fit especially well when children could sip directly from the tool or when caregivers withdrew doses cleanly with a syringe.
Importantly, users described how the tool lightened daily burden and sometimes fostered a sense of ownership among children – signals that better usability can translate into better adherence and outcomes. These experiences align with prior feasibility work showing that stable extemporaneous suspensions can be prepared for key second-line TB medicines, making accurate pediatric dosing more achievable outside formal pharmacy settings.
While the study focused on drug-resistant TB, the underlying use case is universal: safe, accurate, small-volume dosing when tablets are hard to swallow or require titration. That makes XTEMP-R relevant in pediatric, geriatrics, and even veterinary care, where tablet administration and dose customization are routine hurdles. In each context, less mess, clearer steps, and more precise dosing can reduce caregiver stress and support adherence.
XTEMP-R is a small, practical example of TB Alliance’s approach to innovation: designing products for the realities of care. By addressing a basic barrier to taking medicine, the tool points to impact that starts in TB but can extend far beyond it.