VisionDrop AI Limited

VisionDrop AI was founded in 2023 by HKUST members to develop technologies that would empower individuals to conduct quality assurance of the products they consume. With our first product, QiFlow, we are focusing on drinking water testing. Drinking water is a basic human need but even for U.S. consumers good quality water is not always guaranteed. We believe that everyone should have access to affordable means of assessing their water’s quality, being able to detect contaminants with professional lab accuracy.

We envision our company becoming the preeminent provider of home testing solutions for quality assurance. We aim to have a worldwide reach and continually develop product lines for new and exciting applications – ranging from cosmetics quality control to human diagnostics. Our guiding principle is that there should be a personal laboratory for everyone.

VisionDrop AI develops innovative personal laboratory kits powered by microfluidics, revolutionising at-home product testing for everyone.

VisionDrop AI is developing affordable, personal laboratory kits for consumer use. These kits will provide results with comparable accuracy to a professional lab service. Each kit includes an imaging apparatus and microfluidic chips. The imaging apparatus physically supports a smartphone so that it can consistently image the microfluidic chip. The microfluidic chips are consumable to ensure consistency in results; they are centrifugal microfluidic chips, meaning they are spun rapidly to distribute fluid to separate chambers for chemical testing. After actuating a chip to distribute a sample, the smartphone images the chip to perform a colourimetric analysis. The VisionDrop AI app assists in assay setup, performs colourimetry, and manages and interprets results. The current application of the personal laboratory kit is for drinking water analysis and the product is called QiFlow.

Our product utilises three core technologies: miniaturised chemistry, microfluidic chips, and an AI-powered smartphone app. Collectively, these technologies highly automate and simplify the testing process for the user, minimising variability due to user bias and skill. Contaminants are detected via colourimetric or visual readouts. Detection reagents are either sourced commercially or produced in-house. These reagents are contained within centrifugal microfluidic chips that automate the setup of chemical tests for the user. These chips and reagents are imaged with a smartphone using our app, which utilises neural networks for image processing and determination of contaminant concentrations. This framework is advantageous over competing DIY kits because the handling of liquid is done by a machine rather than by the user; similarly, colours are determined by the smartphone app rather than by eye. This makes QiFlow substantially more repeatable and accurate.