A UK university spinout behind a rapid bacterial water testing kit is planning to launch live water quality maps, as scores of beachgoers report falling ill after swimming.

Molendotech, a spinout from the University of Plymouth, sells a portable test that detects E coli and other bacteria in water and delivers results on the spot, without waiting for days to get laboratory results.

Molendotech is now working on an app that will map water quality across Britain and the US, collating data from daily water tests with rain flow and tidal flows and using artificial intelligence to create predictive models. A launch is planned in the UK and US in October.

There have been increasing calls for the government to step up water testing, amid numerous incidents of water pollution and sewage spills in recent years that have contaminated rivers and sea waters in popular locations.

The campaign group Surfers Against Sewage has received 164 reports of sickness so far this year from beachgoers, mostly gastroenteritis but also ear and skin infections and other health problems.

“Rivers are probably worse in the UK than in Europe,” said Simon Jackson, professor of environment and human health at Plymouth University and chief scientific officer of Molendotech.

He founded the company in 2018 when he and his team developed a first version of the test, partly prompted by his stepdaughter getting conjunctivitis and a throat infection, requiring antibiotics, after swimming in the sea.

“What we’re providing is a tool to enable companies or individuals or groups to test the water because it’s easy to use and portable,” he said. “You can test the water repeatedly on the same day. You get a result in real time, whereas currently you’re having to wait one or two days to get a result.”

The company is known for its handheld test, called Bactiquick, which quickly detects harmful gram-negative bacteria – those protected by an outer shell – such as E coli, Pseudomonas, Legionella and salmonella. It produces a colour-change reaction, which is converted into electrical signals and a numerical readout.

The test works with a smartphone app that uses a traffic light system, with a green light signalling low risk for water use, and amber and red warnings indicating bacteria levels above the UK and EU water quality thresholds.

The device, which was launched in May 2025, costs £300, and a test sample costs about £25. Sales revenue has grown from a few thousand pounds a month in mid-2025 to a peak of £94,000 in May, a near 30-fold increase over the past year. In the US, the company has a distributor near the Great Lakes.

Whereas in present water quality testing, a sample is taken and sent to a lab where bacteria cultures are grown and counted, Molendotech’s test looks for a molecule called endotoxin that is released when bacteria break down, and delivers results in less than 15 minutes.

It rated water on the Saltdean beach in Sussex “high risk” last July when the Environment Agency had graded the beach “excellent”.

“We have tested on some beaches with a ‘poor quality’ rating where Bactiquick has given a green or good quality result,” Jackson said. “Sometimes the converse – a red or poor quality result when the rating has been good. This reflects the infrequency of current testing regimes – once a week at best – and the time taken to get a result by current culture methods.” Standard testing typically takes between 24 and 48 hours, Jackson said.

Jackson, an inflammatory diseases specialist whose research has focused on bacteria linked to sepsis, added: “With climate change as the waters get warmer in Europe, in the UK we are starting to see species of bacteria called Vibrio.”

This week, health officials in Louisiana urged beachgoers to take precautions after nine cases of infections from Vibrio vulnificus, a flesh-eating bacterium found in coastal waters.

Molendotech also sells a kit called Bacterisk with 10 channels that carries out 10 tests at a time. Both test kits are rechargeable.

Molendotech, which has received £1.4m in grant funding from Innovate UK and others, works with Britain’s water companies, which are trialling the devices, as well as local authorities and councils. It just raised £860,000 from investors, including the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund, the Exeter-based venture capital firm QantX and private investors, to expand in North America, New Zealand and Australia, taking total investment raised to date to £2.4m.