What iFast Diagnostics does

iFast Diagnostics Limited is a UK-based in-vitro diagnostics company founded in 2023 as a University of Southampton spinout, developing the iFAST ONE ultra-rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) platform. The technology is built on microfluidic impedance cytometry: bacteria suspended in solution are exposed to antibiotics, incubated for two hours, and then measured at single-cell resolution on a microfluidic impedance chip (approximately 5,000 bacteria per sample, read in roughly 30 seconds per well). The instrument produces both qualitative Resistant/Susceptible outputs and quantitative Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) results for up to 16 drugs on the Gram-Negative UK panel in under 3 hours, compared with a standard 40-hour (or 24–72 hour) growth-based workflow.

The company monetises via capital sales of the iFAST ONE instrument plus recurring per-sample economics (from £30 per sample, positioned as cost-equivalent to or cheaper than gold-standard broth microdilution). Its customers span hospital clinical laboratories (NHS and private), commercial diagnostic laboratories (with SYNLAB UK & Ireland as the first commercial laboratory partner), and government/public health agencies (with UK Health Security Agency as the first multi-system commercial customer). UKCA certification covers Gram-negative blood cultures, isolates and quantitative AST for key drugs including Meropenem and Piperacillin-tazobactam; ISO 13485 certification covers design, manufacture and distribution. The company is headquartered in Whiteley, Hampshire, with an additional office on the University of Southampton campus, and had raised £12m of cumulative investment as of May 2026 across funding rounds led by QantX (2023), KHP Ventures (2024) and Meridian Health Ventures (2026), supported by Innovate UK non-dilutive grants and loans.

The go-to-market combines direct enterprise field sales to UK hospital and reference labs with channel-led scale-up via commercial laboratory partners, supported by conference-driven demand generation (FIS International 2025, ESCMID Global 2026) and PR/earned media. Following UK routine clinical availability from early 2026, the company has publicly committed to securing EU regulatory approval and accelerating US FDA clearance, and to expanding the platform's clinical surface area beyond Gram-negative AST into fungal infections and STDs through validation work at UKHSA Porton Down.

Name

iFast Diagnostics

Legal name

iFAST Diagnostics Limited

Website

https://ifastdiagnostics.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2023

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

iFast Diagnostics is a UK-based diagnostics company whose iFAST ONE platform uses microfluidic impedance cytometry to deliver antimicrobial susceptibility testing results in under 3 hours for hospital labs, commercial diagnostics providers (notably SYNLAB UK & Ireland), and public health agencies (notably UKHSA), targeting the $4bn+ AST market.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Diagnostics

NAICS

Medical and Diagnostic Laboratories (6215), Medical Laboratories (621511)

SIC

Services-Medical Laboratories (8071), Services-Testing Laboratories (8734)

akta.pro primary industry

Bioanalytical Testing (PK/ADA/NAb) (HLAGADAA)

Keywords

• Antimicrobial susceptibility testing
• Rapid diagnostics instruments
• Microfluidic impedance cytometry
• Clinical microbiology equipment
• Antimicrobial resistance solutions

Headquarters

HQ city

Northampton

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Supply Chain, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Multi-system instrument sales (hardware): Capital equipment sales of the iFAST ONE ultra-rapid AST system. UKHSA's first multi-system commercial order (three instruments) indicates a multi-instrument deal structure with enterprise/government customers.
2. Per-sample testing (consumables/usage): Recurring per-sample economics at from £30 per sample, equivalent to or cheaper than current gold standard methods. With up to 10 tests/day per reader, this implies consumable or per-test revenue after instrument placement.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

iFast Diagnostics develops and sells the iFAST ONE ultra-rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) system, a hardware instrument that uses a proprietary microfluidic impedance cytometry chip to measure electrical properties of individual bacterial cells. After a two-hour incubation, the instrument reads each well in about 30 seconds across roughly 5,000 bacteria per sample, delivering both qualitative Resistant/Susceptible and quantitative Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) results for up to 16 drugs on the Gram-Neg UK panel in under three hours from Gram-negative positive blood cultures or bacterial isolates, compared with the standard 24–72 hour gold-standard workflow. The company sells capital instruments to hospital, reference and public-health laboratories in Great Britain (UKCA and ISO 13485 certified), with planned EU and US market entry.

Product overview

iFast Diagnostics offers a single, unified rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) product line built around its microfluidic impedance cytometry core technology. The flagship iFAST platform and the iFAST ONE instrument together deliver resistant/susceptible and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) results in under 3 hours from Gram-negative blood cultures and bacterial isolates, addressing a $4bn+ AST market and tackling antimicrobial resistance by enabling clinicians to prescribe the optimal antibiotic within a single working shift. The iFAST ONE instrument is the deployable hardware embodiment of the iFAST microfluidic impedance cytometer technology, and the combined offering has been UKCA Certified for Gram-negative blood cultures and isolates, Quantitative AST (Meropenem, Piperacillin-tazobactam), ISO 13485 certified for design/manufacture/distribution, and adopted by partners including UKHSA (first commercial order) and SYNLAB UK & Ireland (first commercial laboratory partner).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• iFAST ONE: Ultra-rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Test (AST) system delivering high-throughput AST results to clinicians in under three hours from Gram-negative blood cultures and isolates.

Products and services

• iFAST rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) platform Rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) platform based on microfluidic impedance cytometry that delivers Resistant/Susceptible and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) results for up to 16 drugs per sample (Gram-Neg UK panel) in under three hours from Gram-negative positive blood cultures or bacterial isolates, compared with the standard 24–72 hour gold-standard process. For hospital, reference and public-health laboratories.
• iFAST ONE ultra-rapid AST system Ultra-rapid AST hardware instrument using a microfluidic impedance chip to measure electrical properties of single bacteria at high speed. Provides qualitative Resistant/Susceptible and quantitative MIC results for up to 16 drugs per sample in under three hours; UKCA certified for Gram-negative blood cultures, Gram-negative isolates and Quantitative AST, and ISO 13485 certified. Multi-system commercial sales began with the UKHSA order in December 2025.

Quantifiable outcome

• AST results delivered in under 3 hours versus 40+ hours standard (10x faster)
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered flagship, core and minor.

• SYNLAB UK & IrelandflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 May 2026iFAST's first commercial laboratory partner. Builds on a pre-2023 research collaboration. Focus on integrating rapid AST into SYNLAB laboratory workflows, generating evidence for NHS decision-makers, and rolling out the iFAST ONE AST system for routine clinical use alongside ongoing SPS research evaluation.
• UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 December 2025Long-standing research partner since iFAST was founded in early 2023; UKHSA first used a prototype iFAST instrument under an NIHR-funded research partnership with the University of Southampton. Converted to a commercial relationship with the first multi-system order (three iFAST Rapid AST systems) for UKHSA Porton Down's Countermeasure Development Evaluation and Preparedness Division labs.
• University of SouthamptoncoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2023iFAST Diagnostics is a spinout from the University of Southampton founded in early 2023, based on research led by founders Prof Hywel Morgan and Dr Daniel Spencer. The original prototype development and NIHR-funded research partnership with UKHSA originated here.
• Southwest Pathology Services (SPS)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerResearch evaluation partner running the iFAST system research evaluation in parallel with the SYNLAB commercial rollout.
• Healthcare Innovation ConsortiumminorGTM or Marketing PartneriFAST was selected to join the Healthcare Innovation Consortium's AMR Innovation Programme alongside five other companies addressing antimicrobial resistance, receiving support to commercialise and scale its work.

Scale indicators11 records

Recent moves9 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Emerging players

• OpGen: Develops rapid molecular diagnostics for AMR including the Acuitas AMR Gene Panel and AST prediction; an adjacent emerging player combining rapid ID with predicted susceptibility, complementary to phenotypic AST platforms like iFAST.
• T2 Biosystems: Developer of T2 Magnetic Resonance-based rapid diagnostics for sepsis-relevant pathogens; an emerging player in the same clinical-decision-point rapid diagnostics category though its technology is molecular-detection rather than AST.
• Affordable Diagnostics / Zone Diagnostics-type rapid ID-AST: Emerging rapid AST and ID-AST startups and academic spinouts (e.g. Affinity Biosensors, GeneFluidics) that compete for the same AMR/sepsis testing opportunity with novel microfluidics or molecular approaches.

Broad incumbents

• Beckman Coulter: Offers the MicroScan WalkAway AST system and is part of Danaher, a large installed base in clinical microbiology labs; a comparable incumbent with overlapping AST instrumentation and panel offerings.
• Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD): Major diagnostics incumbent with the BD Phoenix M50 AST system and broad microbiology portfolio; competes head-to-head with iFAST for hospital lab AST budgets and KOL relationships.
• bioMérieux: Global leader in clinical microbiology with the VITEK 2 and VITEK MS platforms; the dominant incumbent in hospital AST workflows that iFAST is targeting with a faster, growth-independent method.

Direct peers

• Selux Diagnostics: US-based rapid AST company developing next-generation phenotypic AST platforms intended to deliver same-day antibiotic susceptibility results; directly comparable mission and technology class to iFAST.
• Q-Linea AB: Swedish developer of the ASTar rapid AST system that delivers phenotypic AST directly from positive blood cultures in hours; the most directly comparable rapid-AST pure-play competing for the same sepsis/AST use case as iFAST.
• Specific Diagnostics: Developer of a rapid phenotypic AST platform based on sensing volatile metabolites; a direct peer pursuing the same rapid-AST-from-blood-culture opportunity with a different underlying detection chemistry.
• Accelerate Diagnostics: Developer of the Accelerate Pheno system, one of the first FDA-cleared rapid phenotypic AST platforms delivering results from positive blood cultures in hours; a direct commercial comparator to iFAST in the rapid AST category.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/ifast-diagnostics

Compliance5 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds5 records

Investors10 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about iFast Diagnostics