How a Brazilian Biotech Is Using Macao To Scale Healthcare Access

In Brazil, geography has long been a barrier to healthcare. Over 25 million Brazilians live in rural or remote areas, where access to laboratory diagnostics is limited and often requires travel to regional centers. Vast distances, uneven infrastructure and overburdened hospitals have meant that access to diagnostic testing—often the first step to treatment—remains concentrated in cities.

Hilab’s AI-powered solution changes that. Today, 50% of Brazil’s population lives less than six kilometers from a Hilab diagnostic device, and more than 2 million tests have already been performed through its point-of-care system. In other words, for half a country of more than 200 million people, a clinical lab is no longer a building, it’s a hand-held device within minutes.

That shift reframes how healthcare systems can function when diagnostics move out of centralized labs and into communities, pharmacies, clinics and remote regions. The question is no longer whether decentralization is possible but how far it can go.

Hilab’s innovation lies in compressing the capabilities of a traditional laboratory into portable, AI-enabled devices that deliver lab-quality results from just a few drops of blood. Its platform now supports 25 different tests, covering 85% of the exams most physicians routinely request, from chronic disease monitoring to infectious disease detection.

This model proved its value at scale during the pandemic, when speed and access became matters of national urgency. But its implications extend far beyond crisis response. Chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney disorders disproportionately affect populations far from major medical centers. Decentralized diagnostics bring earlier detection into primary care where it can have the greatest long-term impact.

AI is the connective tissue that makes this possible. “AI allows us to improve accuracy and quality control in point-of-care testing,” says Bernardo de Almeida, Chief Medical Officer at Hilab. “But more importantly, it allows lab decentralization, bringing reliable diagnostics to populations that don’t sit at the center of the healthcare system.”

As Hilab expands beyond Brazil into more than a dozen international markets, it’s encountering a familiar pattern: large populations, wide rural geographies and healthcare systems under strain. That’s where Macao enters the picture.

For Hilab, Macao is a multiplier. The city’s role as a bridge between Portuguese-speaking countries and Asia positions it as a launchpad for scaling decentralized healthcare and wellness into some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets. That role is becoming tangible.

In 2025, Hilab won the top prize at the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (Macao), a program designed to connect technology companies from Brazil and Portugal with investors, universities and partners across the Greater Bay Area.

It also aligns with where Macao says it’s heading. Under its “1+4” strategy for appropriate economic diversification, the city identified healthcare as one of the four priority industries, part of a broader push to strengthen healthcare and build a more resilient economy beyond tourism. Hilab’s model fits that direction: a tool that helps shift healthcare from episodic treatment to continuous, data-enabled wellness.

“Macao is a perfect bridge between Brazilian companies and Asia,” Bernardo says. “There’s the cultural and language connection, but also strong investment in technology, universities and healthcare innovation. It’s the right place to think globally.”

As healthcare systems worldwide grapple with aging populations, chronic disease and rising costs, Hilab’s model offers a clear lesson: access doesn’t have to mean centralization. With the right mix of design, AI and platform thinking, diagnostics can travel farther than hospitals ever could.

And sometimes, the shortest distance between a patient and a lab isn’t six kilometers, it’s a single device, connected to the world through Macao.