One of the advantages of Pharmacom's MAIDS technology is that it can be used for making artificial "locks" for "molecular keys". The "molecular key" can be any type of molecule - ranging from small molecules such as drug substances, amino acids or steroid hormones to larger molecules such as nucleic acids or proteins. Large molecular assemblies such as cells and viruses may also be perceived. In general, though, the difficulty of making the imprinted materials increases with the size of the selected key molecule. Based on Pharmacom's 4S architecture and MAIDS technology, a variety of biosensors can be generated on an unified platform.

Biosensors combine the exquisite selectivity of biology with the processing power of modern microelectronics and optoelectronics to offer powerful new analytical tools with major applications in medicine, environmental diagnostics and the food and processing industries.

Biosensors consist of bio-recognition systems, typically enzymes or binding proteins, such as antibodies, immobilized onto the surface of physicochemical transducers. The term immunosensor is often used to describe biosensors which use antibodies as their biorecognition system. In addition to enzymes and antibodies, the biorecognition systems can also include nucleic acids, bacteria and single cell organisms and even whole tissues of higher organisms. Specific interactions between the target analyte and the complementary biorecognition layer produces a physicochemical change which is detected and subsequently measured by the transducer. The transducer can take many forms depending upon the parameters being measured - electrochemical, optical, mass and thermal changes are the most common.