When I first met the FLASH Diagnostics team at Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, their pitch stopped me in my tracks: sub-hour, on-site screening for antimicrobial resistance. That encounter sparked a deeper dive—and the more I learned, the clearer it became that Bactometer is aiming squarely at one of hospital care’s hardest problems.

🧩 The Problem: AMR at the Point of Admission

AMR is a slow-moving crisis with pandemic-scale risk. European health systems face an estimated 33,000 deaths and €1.5B in costs each year attributed to resistant infections. The bottleneck? We still lack fast, economical strain-level screening at admission to critical units. Without it, colonized patients aren’t isolated early, and hospital-acquired infections spread.

🚨 Why current workflows fall short

• Central-lab turnaround times don’t match ward-level decisions.
  
• Culture/PCR pipelines struggle to combine speed, cost-efficiency, and breadth.
  
• Many tools detect presence—but not the strain-level and resistance gene context clinicians need.
  

🧪 The Solution: Bactometer—Portable Flow Cytometry + Nucleic Acid Readout

Bactometer merges three hard things into one device:

1. Immunomagnetic separation & concentration of pathogens (in-cartridge),
   
2. Magnetic/flow-cytometry-like counting, and
   
3. Nucleic-acid detection to surface resistance genes—all in a workflow designed for on-site use. According to FLASH, sample-to-insight lands in <60 minutes.
   

🧰 How it works (at a glance)

• Microfluidic cartridge: place swabs or fluids into a single-use well.
  
• In-device prep: immunomagnetic labeling concentrates the target organisms.
  
• Dual readout: pathogen counting plus genetic resistance signal for clinical context.
  
• On-site, near-patient: no big lab infrastructure required.
  

💡 What Makes It Different

• Speed + Detail: Sub-hour results and resistance information—rare in portable systems.
  
• Strain-level detection to support strain-specific antibiotics and avoid erroneous prescriptions.
  
• AI-powered detection: the company highlights a patented algorithm to boost precision.
  
• Recognition: Bactometer won NTT DATA Foundation’s eAwards Portugal 2022, signaling early validation from the innovation ecosystem.
  

🧑‍🔬 The Team (Lisbon-based)

FLASH Diagnostics sits in Lisbon, close to Instituto Superior Técnico. Co-founders include:

• Diogo Coroas Caetano — Researcher at INESC MN; Founder, FLASH Diagnostics.
  
• Rúben Afonso — Co-Founder; research background at INESC MN and experience in instrumentation/venture building.
  
• Beatriz Torgal Martins — Chemistry/biotech profile with academic R&D track (PhD work) and startup contributions.
  

Company page: LinkedIn: FLASH Rapid Diagnostics and Website.

🏥 Use Cases We’re Excited About

• ICU/ER admission screening: identify colonized patients rapidly to trigger isolation.
  
• Surgical wards: pre-op screening to reduce SSIs and optimize antibiotic stewardship.
  
• Outbreak investigation: faster mapping of colonization patterns and resistance spread.
  

🤝 YOUR R&D × FLASH Diagnostics: Where We Can Collaborate

At YOUR R&D, we specialize in full-stack software & AI for HealthTech—from device-side intelligence to compliant cloud platforms. Here’s where we see immediate synergy:

 Device–Cloud Architecture & LIMS/EHR Integration

• Secure data pipeline from Bactometer devices to the cloud (HIPAA/GDPR-minded design).
  
• LIMS integration (HL7/FHIR bridges) to push strain/resistome results into hospital systems.
  
• Fleet management for devices (remote updates, telemetry, QC dashboards).
  

 On-device AI & MLOps

• Optimizing the signal-processing/AI pipeline for robustness across sample types.
  
• Continuous learning with privacy-preserving pipelines (e.g., edge aggregation).
  

UX for Ward Workflows

• Nurse-friendly UI on tablet/handheld with step-by-step cartridge guidance.
  
• Alerting & isolation protocols baked into app logic to reduce miss-steps.
  

If you’re exploring AMR and precision diagnostics, see our related write-up on phage-enabled precision medicine and AMR strategy—this is a space we know and love.

📊 Why This Matters for Hospitals

• Contain outbreaks earlier with actionable, ward-speed results.
  
• Right-size antibiotics using strain/resistance data to lift stewardship targets.
  
• Lower LOS and costs by preventing colonization from becoming infection.
  

🔗 Useful Links

• FLASH Diagnostics website: https://www.flash-diagnostics.com/ (product overview & contact).
  
• FLASH LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flashrapiddiagnostics/ (company updates).
  
• Team: Diogo Coroas Caetano, Rúben Afonso, Beatriz Torgal Martins.
  
• YOUR R&D homepage: (AI & software development in HealthTech).
  
  

#HealthTech #MedTech #Diagnostics #AMR #AIinHealthcare #PointOfCare #SoftwareDevelopment #YOURRND