Would be interesting how much resolution they need for the diagnosis to be reliable.<p>Because high resolution mass spectrometers cost millions of dollars, and "minutes" for a diagnosis can mean that one spectrometer can only run 3 samples per hour - or 72 per day.<p>And while a research university can afford a million dollar spectrometer (and the grad students that run it), even a small hospital will create 72 bacterial swaps per hour - while absolutely not having the money to get 10 spectrometers with the corresponding technicians.<p>And the incumbent/competitor - standard bacterial cultures - is cheap!
Mass spectromity is a bit expensive. My company can detect a common plant virus reliable with multi-spectral imaging only. Normal hires B/W cameras. 10 days before visible symptoms. SpexAI.com<p>Only vision scales. We did mass spectromity in Formula 1 because we had the money and it doesn't need to scale.
You can identify quite a few pathogens with Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. I think the machines for that are smaller and cheaper than mass spec machines.<p>see <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5631018/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5631018/</a> , and this company that is commercialising it <a href="https://microbira.com/" rel="nofollow">https://microbira.com/</a>