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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

A team of international researchers recently unveiled a nano array that can identify the chemical signatures of 17 different diseases [newatlas.com], 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 [newatlas.com] or diabetes [newatlas.com]. And while there have been attempts [newatlas.com] to identify [newatlas.com] a wider scope of ailments, there has been no real breakthrough at distinguishing different diseases in a breath sample – till now.

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