Work published in PLoS Medicine defined a new diagnostic standard for TB meningitis globally and has shaped the WHO Guidelines on how TB-meningitis is diagnosed. Other work highlighted the notion that global case finding strategies require a reconfiguration, from one of passive (patient-reported) to active case finding, which is critical to interrupt transmission and facilitate control (now a priority given reduced TB detection due to COVID-19). Keertan’s distinctive evidenced-based approach, in contradistinction to traditional accuracy-based evaluation methodology, has leveraged randomised controlled trial design to evaluate the impact of new TB diagnostic tools on patient important outcomes. A randomised trial reported in The Lancet (2014) highlighted the futility of a passive case finding strategy and has catalysed the point-of-care placement of newer DNA-based in TB hotspots such as prisons, mines, and high burden clinics. This spawned the development of a novel active case finding model (Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2017) that was recently refined and validated (Nature Medicine, 2023). These were the first randomised controlled trials using DNA-based diagnostics, showing that active case-finding is feasible and more effective than traditional tools (leading to shortened time-to-treatment and early identification of undiagnosed infectious TB cases). Further work published in The Lancet (2016) underpinned WHO policy for the roll-out and scale-up of the urine TB LAM test globally.