What is Solu?
Solu is a user-friendly web platform that analyzes bacterial or fungal DNA from patient infections and delivers clear results in 10 minutes . The problem it solves: When hospitals sequence infection samples, they get massive DNA files requiring expert analysis that can take 2-3 days. Solu automates everything:
Upload DNA file → Get instant answers in 10 minutes:
✓ What bacteria/fungus? (MRSA, Salmonella, Candida auris?)
✓ Which antibiotics won’t work? (resistance profile)
✓ Are multiple patients infected with the SAME strain? (outbreak alert)
✓ Visual “family tree” showing how infections spread between patients
It is developed specifically for hospitals - HIPAA-compliant with automatic outbreak detection that compares new samples against your entire historical dataset.
Why Hospitals Need This Now
Antibiotic resistance kills 1.27M people yearly worldwide (The Lancet 2022). Superbugs like MRSA and VRE spread silently between patients.
Traditional analysis fails hospitals because:
- Too slow. 2-3 days = infections spread unchecked
- Too complex. Command-line tools nobody understands
- Not secure. Academic tools don’t meet HIPAA standards
- Too expensive.
Solu fixes all this with a simple web interface built for infection control teams.
How it works?
- Drag & drop your FASTQ files (from any sequencer)
- Solu analyzes automatically (no configuration needed):
- Identifies species
- Detects antibiotic resistance genes
- Builds phylogenetic trees vs. all your historical samples
- View interactive results: Species reports, resistance profiles, outbreak clusters
Time: 10 min (bacteria) | 20 min (fungi)
Demo: https://platform.solugenomics.com/w/solu-publication
Proven Results: Real Hospital Outbreaks
Solu was rigorously tested on 304 outbreak samples from published studies:
| Pathogen | Samples | Key Results | Analysis Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| S. aureus (MRSA) | 135 | 98 % typing accuracy, mecA 98.8 % | 11 min |
| E. faecium (VRE) | 99 | 99.6 % resistance detection | 7 min |
| Salmonella | 23 | Perfect species ID | 8 min |
| Candida auris | 47 | Found mutations missed by original study | 24 min |
Solu even discovered new resistance mutations that original researchers missed!
It is safe?
Enterprise-grade security for hospitals:
| Security Feature | ✓ Status |
|---|---|
| HIPAA | Compliant - BAA available |
| ISO27001 | Certified |
| Data encryption | At rest + in transit |
| Private cloud | Your data never shared |
| Storage options | EU or US (your choice) |
Not an academic project - commercial platform by Solu Healthcare Oy (Finland) with ongoing support and updates.
Want to learn more?
I know you do!
“Solu: a cloud platform for real-time genomic pathogen surveillance”
Saratto, T., Visuri, K., Lehtinen, J. et al. Solu: a cloud platform for real-time genomic pathogen surveillance. BMC Bioinformatics 26, 12 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-024-06005-z