Making medical diagnostics affordable, continuous, and ubiquitous
Tomorrow’s diagnostic lab
A novel spectroscopic technology in a portable desktop system…
Inexpensive — ~$10,000 plus small per use charge
Low power — only 100W
High throughput, fast results < 5 minutes per sample
10x more diagnostics
Simple operation, minimal training
No consumables, over-the-air (OTA) updates.
This is what we are building.
Medical diagnostics is broken
Labs face onerous requirements: high upfront capital outlays for dozens of complicated machines, specialized real estate, and a large staff for sample preparation and throughput, as well as costly equipment maintenance. Further limitations include low throughput, limited multiplexing of specialized tests, and narrow test coverage.
With the status quo, we will never achieve ubiquitous, affordable, and universally accessible broad-spectrum diagnostic coverage, which is required to move the needle on healthcare.
Made possible by a breakthrough in non-thermal plasma transformation…
One system, many analyses… almost everything a mass spectrometer can do — but faster, cheaper, and better
Continuous-flow transformation of sample into non-thermal plasma in four steps:
1. Transformation of liquid or gas (breath) into biphasic flow
2. Application of an electric field in short, high burst
3. Transformation into plasma
4. Spectrum capture
Instead of using energy and gases to ionize carefully prepared bio-samples, we convert raw samples into non-thermal plasma for continuous analysis. Machine learning can light up additional diagnostics in the future — even retroactively on old sample data.
An entirely new approach to diagnostics…
Breath analysis
VOCs, gases (e.g., CO2, CH4), detection of tuberculosis and other infections. Ongoing search for cancer, drug metabolism, and organ function markers
Urine analysis
Metabolomics, cancer screening, drug monitoring, hormone analysis, organic-acid analysis, protein profiling, toxicology testing, amino-acid analysis, lipid profiling, elemental analysis, biomarker discovery, and infectious-disease testing
Blood electrolyte analysis
Electrolyte panel (sodium, potassium, calcium, chloride, bicarbonate, phosphate, magnesium)
Blood protein analysis
Identification and quantification of some proteins, lipids, metabolites, drugs, toxins, nutrients; characterization of blood cells; begin identifying and measuring biomarkers for cancer and other diseases
Saliva
Hormone analysis, biomarker discovery, proteomics, metabolomics, drug monitoring, infectious-disease testing, enzyme analysis, genetic testing, and elemental analysis
Our vision
DNA sequencing has translated biology into data, revealing a vast digital universe of genetic knowledge.
But even DNA has limitations. It is abstracted from the actual physical processes. In contrast, spectroscopy and light signatures can give us direct, real-time readings — continuously and cheaply.
We strive to create a world of streaming biological data that spots the smallest problem as soon as it appears. The technology should be available to every human on Earth.