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A team of international researchers recently unveiled a nano array that can identify the chemical signatures of 17 different diseases, possibly bringing us closer to the day when doctors might be able to use a medical tricorder a la Star Trek to instantly diagnose a patient's conditions.
Though it isn't exactly a new idea – Hippocrates wrote about the correlation between breath odors and disease back in 400 B.C. and traditional Chinese medicine has long seen halitosis as an indication of an unbalanced qi – using breath tests to diagnose and monitor bodily disorders and disease is a research field that has been gaining momentum in recent years. And for good reason too. It would be the ultimate diagnostic test – potentially inexpensive and painless (not to mention a godsend for anyone with a fear of needles), and it would be able to deliver results fairly quickly too.
That said, in order for this to happen, breathalyzers need to be able to identify more than one disease at any given time. The technologies developed to date have a limited scope and are designed to detect only one kind of disease, such as a particular type of cancer or diabetes. And while there have been attempts to identify a wider scope of ailments, there has been no real breakthrough at distinguishing different diseases in a breath sample – till now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @09:36PM
They probably CAN sniff out a lot more diseases, without any training on our part.
They require training. The raw talent is there, a dog might be able to smell millions of different things in the air but how would he know the significance of most of them? There's no instinct for "oh this sort of smell is what the humans want me to bark at". They wouldn't know that something means "disease X" or "bomb".
It's like a kid being able to see stuff very clearly but not be able to read books, follow a spoor, tell ripe fruit from unripe fruit etc. The kid needs to be taught and trained to maximise his potential even if his eyesight is far better than his teachers.
The robots and sensors don't have bad days
Yeah, dogs get bored, machines don't.