A Swedish Startup's Big Bet on Affordable STI Testing

Jan de Vries · 2026-08-27

Let's talk about something that doesn't get enough airtime in the startup world – making healthcare genuinely accessible. Over in Sweden, a company called Readily Diagnostics just got a serious vote of confidence for tackling exactly that. They've landed a grant of about $865,000 from the Gates Foundation. Their mission? To build an affordable, point-of-care test for the world's most common sexually transmitted infections: chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis. Think about that for a second. Hundreds of millions of new cases of these infections pop up every single year. Yet in so many places, getting an accurate diagnosis is a luxury. It's either too slow, too expensive, or just plain unavailable. That's the problem Readily is aiming to solve. ### What This Grant Actually Funds This isn't just a check to keep the lights on. This funding is specifically for the early, gritty work. We're talking about concept development and feasibility studies for a complete diagnostic platform. The goal is a test you can run right at the point of care – think a clinic, a community health center, or a family planning office – with no need to send samples off to a distant lab. The roadmap includes everything from sample preparation to detecting antimicrobial resistance. Yes, resistance. That's a huge part of this. The World Health Organization lists drug-resistant gonorrhea as an urgent global threat. Readily's platform is being designed to spot the genetic markers of antibiotic resistance from the get-go. That means a clinician could know *before* prescribing a treatment whether it'll actually work. That's a game-changer for patient care and for slowing down the scary march of superbugs. ### The Bigger Picture in European Health Tech Readily's news isn't happening in a vacuum. It's part of a much wider wave of investment flooding into decentralized and rapid diagnostics across Europe. Just recently, there's been a flurry of activity: - En Carta Diagnostics in Paris secured around $5.3 million for at-home tests for Lyme disease and STIs. - Germany's Intu Diagnostics raised roughly $1.2 million for its lab-free molecular testing platform. - Dutch startup ShanX Medtech pulled in a massive $25.6 million for rapid antimicrobial-susceptibility diagnostics. And that's not all. Germany's NanoStruct got $2.8 million for fast bacterial detection. Back in Sweden, Stockholm's Eyedentity secured $1.4 million for an AI-powered diagnostics platform. All told, that's over $36 million pouring into this vital sector. It tells you where the smart money sees a need – and an opportunity for massive impact. ### Why This Approach Matters Liza Löf, Readily's CEO, put it perfectly: “A diagnosis should not depend on where you happen to live.” That's the core philosophy. In too many low- and middle-income countries, people are often treated based on symptoms alone. No test. That leads to missed infections, overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and more transmission. Readily is spinning out technology originally developed for respiratory infections at Uppsala University. They're using something called padlock-probe tech to create a test that's sensitive, specific, and rapid. The idea is to design it to run directly on a patient sample and to be cost-effective for the exact settings where testing is hardest to reach: primary care clinics, HIV-prevention programs, you name it. It's built from the ground up with the Gates Foundation's global access principles. Affordable and widely accessible aren't afterthoughts; they're the blueprint. This isn't about creating another premium tool for wealthy markets. It's about building something that can work anywhere, because health equity shouldn't be a niche product feature. So, while the headline is about funding, the real story is about a shift. It's about European startups leveraging deep tech not just for exits, but for access. And in a world still grappling with pandemics and health disparities, that might just be the most important bet of all.