Chip-based diagnostics device from Leuven could detect future outbreaks

“By making diagnostics easily available in airports and at border control, virus outbreaks such as the current corona pandemic can be prevented in the earliest stage, which is especially helpful if carriers aren’t showing symptoms,” explains Midiagnostics CEO Nicolas Vergauwe. “If you want to detect a sudden rise early on, you need proper technology that can be used outside classical laboratory settings. We’re fighting fires, where we should have installed smoke alarms.”

Leuven-based Midiagnostics is developing such a smoke alarm: a chip-based diagnostics platform that allows users to obtain rapid test results for acute, chronic and epidemic diseases, such as future pandemics. It recently received a 14 million euro investment to bring its solution to the market. The primary new investors are Rudi Pauwels, Belgian pharmacologist, serial entrepreneur and the company’s chairman, and Urbain Vandeurzen, one of Belgium’s leading business entrepreneurs and chairman of VMF Invest.