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Could it be used with e.g., a drop of blood, to see which bacteria strain is making you sick?

Yes, if you were willing to shell out 1000 bucks for the test, and if the bacteria was in your bloodstream (unlikely). If you swabbed, cultured, and sequenced, it'd be a better test.

I've personally used the oxford nanopore to diagnose malaria subtypes from ~1ml blood draws. Though it took awhile to do so, well beyond clinically relevant time periods. Our best turn around was about 2 days for sequence, but analysis takes much longer.

Culturing is the problem, though, right? Many types of bacteria (including some pathogens) really do not like to grow on most media. There's no doubt that sequencing is the future of infection diagnosis. It's just a matter of how long it takes to get there (cost and complexity both have to drop).

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