Chronus Health Inc.

Chronus Health have been developing a blood cell counter. These are pretty common in clinics. You’ll often have a white/red blood cell count run as part of a larger workup... I personally have one done every 3 months, they’re a very common and basic test… It seems likely that billions of these tests are run every year.

I suspect Chronus view these tests as an attractive market for this reason. And have therefore been engaged in developing a semiconductor based blood tester. Traditionally blood cell counts can be done with a Coulter counter. These are pretty simple instruments, which drive cells through a micron sized aperture, and measure a current through a conductive solution as the cells block the pore. The basic design has been around since the 1940s.

Schematic of a Coulter counter demonstrator I played with a while ago. A pump (well mostly gravity here) drives the particle flow (unlike in DNA sequencing nanopore systems). But the translocation is measured my monitoring ionic current is the same way.

Before Coulter counters, someone would have to manually count cells on a blood smear under a microscope. So these instruments were a major innovation.