Antimicrobial resistance — whichever mechanism, whichever host — is diagnosed 24 to 72 hours after the sample is taken, in a central lab, by trained staff. Fluiscope puts the answer at the point of need: hospitals, waste water treatment plants, agri-food plants and in the environment.
Our versatile technological platform detects antimicrobial resistance across varying constraints and environmental conditions.
The diagnostic gap
Culture and antibiotic susceptibility testing take one to three days. In the meantime, patients receive broad-spectrum antibiotics, contaminated effluent is already downstream, food batches are contaminated. The delay isn't an inconvenience — it enables resistance to spread and compound.
Trained staff · lab infrastructure · sample transport
15 min for the test itself · up to about 6 h when a short liquid enrichment step is unavoidable · no trained operator · digital result
Isolation decisions during the admission window, not after it. Proper treatment from day zero. Surveillance data that arrives while it can still inform an action — in a hospital, a slaughterhouse, or a wastewater plant.
One Health positioning
Most diagnostics companies pick one vertical and build a dedicated instrument for it. Fluiscope's electrochemical core and lateral-flow chemistry are the same in all three — what changes is the sample preparation, the antibody and the enzymatic substrate. That holds across resistance mechanisms as much as across sectors: one R&D investment, three core components.
Clinical
Screening patients on arrival in ICU and high-risk wards, so isolation and therapy decisions are made in the same shift as the swab. Carbapenemases are the validated entry assay; ESBL, MRSA and further mechanisms follow on the same reader.
Veterinary & agri-food
Herd-level resistance screening and surface hygiene swabs along the food chain, where sending samples to a lab is rarely proportionate to the decision being made.
Environment
On-site AMR and microbial monitoring at treatment plants and in surface water — the surveillance layer the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive turns from optional to mandatory.
The platform
Lateral flow and electrochemistry are not competing options, they are two instruments in the same hand. Either one can stand alone: a strip where speed and simplicity decide, an electrode where you need a quantitative, traceable measurement. Put them together and each covers the other's blind spot. Which arrangement applies is a question about your use case — the matrix, the decision, the constraints on site — not about the technology.
Disposable printed carbon electrodes read the electrical signature of an enzymatic reaction. Because the readout is the reaction rather than a fixed target, changing the substrate changes the resistance mechanism detected — the instrument stays the same. Four channels run in parallel, controls included.
Capillary migration on a paper strip with gold-nanoparticle-labelled antibodies. Result in minutes, no instrument, no trained operator, unit costs that survive routine screening. The format that goes where a laboratory cannot.
The two pillars can be combined in more than one way, and the use case decides which. Physically integrated in a single cartridge where the sample allows it. Run side by side when two independent signals on the same sample are what buys confidence. Run in sequence — strip first as a triage, electrode second to confirm and quantify — when the decision is a rapid one and the cost of a false call is high.
Example: electrochemical readout of AMR for multiple strains
* First validated assay — carbapenemase detection, CHU UCL Namur. The readout measures enzymatic activity, so the same core extends to other resistance mechanisms.
Use case 01 · clinical AMR
Carbapenems are a last-resort antibiotic. When an Enterobacterales isolate produces a carbapenemase — KPC, NDM, VIM, OXA-48, IMP — the clinician is near the end of the therapeutic line, and reported in-hospital mortality for carbapenem-resistant infections runs between 30 and 50% depending on the cohort. BELMAP tracks these resistances in Belgium under a category of their own. This is the use case where a few hours of diagnostic delay changes an outcome, which is why we validated here first.
Culture sets the clock. At least six hours of growth before any test can run — so everything after it had better be fast.
Immunochromatographic strips
Quick and simple, widely used as a first-line screen — but they recognise known enzyme families only. An uncovered variant or atypical expression can pass unseen, and they say nothing about actual enzymatic activity.
Rapid phenotypic tests
These measure activity rather than a predefined genetic panel, which is their great advantage. But colour reading is subjective, sensitive to inoculum and operating conditions, and ambiguous at low activity levels.
Reference methods
Full AST needs 24 to 48 hours. PCR runs €40–50 per test on dedicated infrastructure and detects genes whether or not they are expressed. BELMAP frames both as complements to phenotypic work, not replacements.
The gap, and what we add
No universal phenotypic test returns robust information in under fifteen minutes, and no single device couples a rapid screen to a digitalised functional confirmation. So laboratories run several tests in cascade — complex interpretation, late decision, no native digital trace of how the conclusion was reached.
Our contribution is a short sequential protocol. A lateral flow assay built for phenotype — targeting the functional hydrolysis of sentinel antibiotics rather than an enzyme's shape — triages within fifteen minutes. The BYG electrochemical read then confirms and characterises the mechanism, measuring hydrolysis kinetics by differential pulse voltammetry. Molecular recognition on one side, enzyme kinetics on the other: two signals of different natures on the same sample, combined into one digital verdict.
We are not proposing to replace the reference methods. We are shortening the interval in which a clinician has nothing to act on — what the literature calls diagnostic stewardship: changing how tests are ordered, run and reported so that treatment improves, resistance pressure falls, and laboratory resources go where they matter (Fabre et al., 2023).
Sequenced roadmap
The order is deliberate. The platform is validated first for carbapenem resistance, the use case where the clinical stakes are highest and the evidence is strongest. From there we extend into markets that regulation is about to create — reusing the same reader and the same chemistry, so each phase inherits the work of the one before it rather than starting over.
Carbapenem resistance first. Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae is the assay taken all the way through clinical validation — the reference case that establishes the platform and opens the way for the rest of the panel.
AMR surveillance in wastewater and surface water, and resistance screening across the veterinary and agri-food chain. Demand here is created by directive, not by procurement preference.
MRSA, ESBL and further mechanisms added to the clinical menu. The highest-leverage extension: same instrument, same chemistry, same regulatory route as Phase 1 — a wider panel on a platform that already exists. Assay work, not platform work.
Business model
Fluiscope is built to do the part that is hard to copy — sensor science, assay development, integration. That capability generates revenue three ways: under contract for partners, through licences on what we develop in-house, and through small production runs that let end users validate a test before anyone commits to industrial scale.
Custom electrochemical and LFA sensor development on a CRO basis — from a partner's target to a working prototype in weeks to months. Paid development, the partner keeps the application.
Technologies we develop in-house, protected with UCLouvain and clinical partners, then licensed out: upfront fees, development milestones and per-unit royalties from diagnostics manufacturers. Revenue that scales without our headcount.
Small production runs of research-use-only tests, so end users can validate performance on their own samples and in their own conditions before industrialisation is on the table.
Team
Co-founder · Co-managing director
PhD UCLouvain, MBA Solvay. ~10 years of lateral flow assay development across academic and industrial settings.
LinkedIn
Scientific Director
PhD in electronics. +15 years in electrochemical sensing; first author of the BYG Carba clinical evaluation.
LinkedIn
Co-managing director · Business
PhD in biosciences, MBA Solvay, former McKinsey. Leads commercial strategy, licensing and partnerships.
LinkedInWork with us
Whether you need resistance data faster than your current lab loop allows, a sensor for a contaminant nobody sells a test for, or a platform to license into your own product line — the conversation starts the same way: what are you trying to detect, and what decision depends on it.
Partnership contact
Contact usProudly supported by
Antimicrobial resistance — whichever mechanism, whichever host — is diagnosed 24 to 72 hours after the sample is taken, in a central lab, by trained staff. Fluiscope puts the answer at the point of need: hospitals, waste water treatment plants, agri-food plants and in the environment.
Our versatile technological platform detects antimicrobial resistance across varying constraints and environmental conditions.
The diagnostic gap
Culture and antibiotic susceptibility testing take one to three days. In the meantime, patients receive broad-spectrum antibiotics, contaminated effluent is already downstream, food batches are contaminated. The delay isn't an inconvenience — it enables resistance to spread and compound.
Trained staff · lab infrastructure · sample transport
15 min for the test itself · up to about 6 h when a short liquid enrichment step is unavoidable · no trained operator · digital result
Isolation decisions during the admission window, not after it. Proper treatment from day zero. Surveillance data that arrives while it can still inform an action — in a hospital, a slaughterhouse, or a wastewater plant.
One Health positioning
Most diagnostics companies pick one vertical and build a dedicated instrument for it. Fluiscope's electrochemical core and lateral-flow chemistry are the same in all three — what changes is the sample preparation, the antibody and the enzymatic substrate. That holds across resistance mechanisms as much as across sectors: one R&D investment, three core components.
Clinical
Screening patients on arrival in ICU and high-risk wards, so isolation and therapy decisions are made in the same shift as the swab. Carbapenemases are the validated entry assay; ESBL, MRSA and further mechanisms follow on the same reader.
Veterinary & agri-food
Herd-level resistance screening and surface hygiene swabs along the food chain, where sending samples to a lab is rarely proportionate to the decision being made.
Environment
On-site AMR and microbial monitoring at treatment plants and in surface water — the surveillance layer the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive turns from optional to mandatory.
The platform
Lateral flow and electrochemistry are not competing options, they are two instruments in the same hand. Either one can stand alone: a strip where speed and simplicity decide, an electrode where you need a quantitative, traceable measurement. Put them together and each covers the other's blind spot. Which arrangement applies is a question about your use case — the matrix, the decision, the constraints on site — not about the technology.
Disposable printed carbon electrodes read the electrical signature of an enzymatic reaction. Because the readout is the reaction rather than a fixed target, changing the substrate changes the resistance mechanism detected — the instrument stays the same. Four channels run in parallel, controls included.
Capillary migration on a paper strip with gold-nanoparticle-labelled antibodies. Result in minutes, no instrument, no trained operator, unit costs that survive routine screening. The format that goes where a laboratory cannot.
The two pillars can be combined in more than one way, and the use case decides which. Physically integrated in a single cartridge where the sample allows it. Run side by side when two independent signals on the same sample are what buys confidence. Run in sequence — strip first as a triage, electrode second to confirm and quantify — when the decision is a rapid one and the cost of a false call is high.
Example: electrochemical readout of AMR for multiple strains
* First validated assay — carbapenemase detection, CHU UCL Namur. The readout measures enzymatic activity, so the same core extends to other resistance mechanisms.
Use case 01 · clinical AMR
Carbapenems are a last-resort antibiotic. When an Enterobacterales isolate produces a carbapenemase — KPC, NDM, VIM, OXA-48, IMP — the clinician is near the end of the therapeutic line, and reported in-hospital mortality for carbapenem-resistant infections runs between 30 and 50% depending on the cohort. BELMAP tracks these resistances in Belgium under a category of their own. This is the use case where a few hours of diagnostic delay changes an outcome, which is why we validated here first.
Culture sets the clock. At least six hours of growth before any test can run — so everything after it had better be fast.
Immunochromatographic strips
Quick and simple, widely used as a first-line screen — but they recognise known enzyme families only. An uncovered variant or atypical expression can pass unseen, and they say nothing about actual enzymatic activity.
Rapid phenotypic tests
These measure activity rather than a predefined genetic panel, which is their great advantage. But colour reading is subjective, sensitive to inoculum and operating conditions, and ambiguous at low activity levels.
Reference methods
Full AST needs 24 to 48 hours. PCR runs €40–50 per test on dedicated infrastructure and detects genes whether or not they are expressed. BELMAP frames both as complements to phenotypic work, not replacements.
The gap, and what we add
No universal phenotypic test returns robust information in under fifteen minutes, and no single device couples a rapid screen to a digitalised functional confirmation. So laboratories run several tests in cascade — complex interpretation, late decision, no native digital trace of how the conclusion was reached.
Our contribution is a short sequential protocol. A lateral flow assay built for phenotype — targeting the functional hydrolysis of sentinel antibiotics rather than an enzyme's shape — triages within fifteen minutes. The BYG electrochemical read then confirms and characterises the mechanism, measuring hydrolysis kinetics by differential pulse voltammetry. Molecular recognition on one side, enzyme kinetics on the other: two signals of different natures on the same sample, combined into one digital verdict.
We are not proposing to replace the reference methods. We are shortening the interval in which a clinician has nothing to act on — what the literature calls diagnostic stewardship: changing how tests are ordered, run and reported so that treatment improves, resistance pressure falls, and laboratory resources go where they matter (Fabre et al., 2023).
Sequenced roadmap
The order is deliberate. The platform is validated first for carbapenem resistance, the use case where the clinical stakes are highest and the evidence is strongest. From there we extend into markets that regulation is about to create — reusing the same reader and the same chemistry, so each phase inherits the work of the one before it rather than starting over.
Carbapenem resistance first. Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae is the assay taken all the way through clinical validation — the reference case that establishes the platform and opens the way for the rest of the panel.
AMR surveillance in wastewater and surface water, and resistance screening across the veterinary and agri-food chain. Demand here is created by directive, not by procurement preference.
MRSA, ESBL and further mechanisms added to the clinical menu. The highest-leverage extension: same instrument, same chemistry, same regulatory route as Phase 1 — a wider panel on a platform that already exists. Assay work, not platform work.
Business model
Fluiscope is built to do the part that is hard to copy — sensor science, assay development, integration. That capability generates revenue three ways: under contract for partners, through licences on what we develop in-house, and through small production runs that let end users validate a test before anyone commits to industrial scale.
Custom electrochemical and LFA sensor development on a CRO basis — from a partner's target to a working prototype in weeks to months. Paid development, the partner keeps the application.
Technologies we develop in-house, protected with UCLouvain and clinical partners, then licensed out: upfront fees, development milestones and per-unit royalties from diagnostics manufacturers. Revenue that scales without our headcount.
Small production runs of research-use-only tests, so end users can validate performance on their own samples and in their own conditions before industrialisation is on the table.
Team
Co-founder · Co-managing director
PhD UCLouvain, MBA Solvay. ~10 years of lateral flow assay development across academic and industrial settings.
LinkedIn
Scientific Director
PhD in electronics. +15 years in electrochemical sensing; first author of the BYG Carba clinical evaluation.
LinkedIn
Co-managing director · Business
PhD in biosciences, MBA Solvay, former McKinsey. Leads commercial strategy, licensing and partnerships.
LinkedInWork with us
Whether you need resistance data faster than your current lab loop allows, a sensor for a contaminant nobody sells a test for, or a platform to license into your own product line — the conversation starts the same way: what are you trying to detect, and what decision depends on it.
Partnership contact
Contact usProudly supported by
