When someone is bitten by a tick, time is everything. Lyme disease symptoms—fatigue, brain fog, relentless pain—can take weeks to appear. But what if you could know within 30 minutes whether that tick carried the bacteria that cause Lyme disease? That’s the gap LymeAlert, Inc. is working to close with the first-ever home test kit designed to detect Lyme-causing bacteria in ticks and support faster, more informed care decisions.
Lyme disease remains a growing concern, particularly in areas of high prevalence like the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, approximately 476,000 people are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year—but many more cases go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. The stakes are high: The average cost per person for treatment can reach $3,000, yet 99% of cases are treatable with antibiotics if caught early. The need for better awareness, earlier detection, and more reliable data is urgent.
Co-founded by MIT Sloan Fellow and physician assistant Erin Dawicki, LymeAlert was born from Dawicki’s firsthand experience with patients who’d discovered a tick, but weren’t sure what to do next. That’s where LymeAlert’s test kit can have real impact: enabling earlier decision-making by helping individuals identify whether a tick carries Lyme-causing bacteria—right at home.
The LymeAlert kit uses a simple three-step process to detect the presence of Borrelia burgdorferi—the bacteria that causes Lyme disease—in the tick itself. Users crush the tick using the enclosed tool, mix it with a test solution, and insert a strip to check for bacterial presence. Results appear in about 30 minutes. While the kit empowers faster decision-making, it is not yet Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved and is not intended as a standalone diagnostic.
LymeAlert recently completed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, led by VentureWell and designed to help early-stage innovators refine their ideas, understand their markets, and prepare for funding opportunities, such as the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
From the start, LymeAlert stood out—not only for the strength of its innovation, but for the team’s deep commitment to understanding the people they seek to serve. While the program required 30 customer discovery interviews, the LymeAlert team more than exceeded expectations, completing 51 interviews with patients, healthcare providers, and public health stakeholders. Each interview helped sharpen their approach and reinforce the real-world relevance of their solution.
By the final Bootcamp session, the LymeAlert team had earned high praise from instructors, who noted the team’s clear focus on a well defined beachhead market, thoughtful growth strategy, and well researched responses to questions about market entry. Their work demonstrated more than just readiness for SBIR-funding; it reflected a strong grasp of the innovation landscape, competitive positioning, and a deep understanding of customer needs—key indicators of potential for commercial impact.
Programs like the NIH Entrepreneurship Bootcamp are designed to catalyze rapid validation and iteration. LymeAlert’s experience shows the sort of momentum that can build when innovators fully embrace the opportunity. By actively listening, iterating, and refining, they’ve moved one step closer to delivering a solution that could make a meaningful difference in the fight against Lyme disease.
LymeAlert is now working to optimize its prototype for large-scale manufacturing. The team is partnering with a contract development and manufacturing organization for the tick crushing device and a contract research organization for the test strips. Their goal is to begin beta testing their first commercially produced kits by early summer 2026. They’re also preparing to raise a seed round to support further research & development—specifically, developing a multiplexed version of the kit that can detect multiple pathogens from a single tick and test strip.
As LymeAlert prepares to expand its platform to address vector-borne diseases globally—across both human and animal health—its user-centered approach offers a powerful model for early-stage health innovation. As they move toward commercialization, the team is also focused on a different kind of challenge: changing public behavior.
“One of our challenges is shifting behavior—helping people think to test their tick instead of panicking and throwing it away,” Dawicki said.
To support this shift, they’re focusing on building their social media presence and creating educational content that encourages people to treat the tick as critical data—not trash.
Health innovation doesn’t start with technology; it starts with people. LymeAlert’s approach offers a compelling example of how listening first and centering real-world needs can lead to smarter, more effective solutions that improve health outcomes and lives.