One day, you'll have to insert your ATM card into this machine and it may let you into the hospital if you can afford your illness or it can secure you on demand financing.
One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#22How expensive would it be to make a machine that can smell if you or your clothes stink? I would pay at least $150 for that as a hard-of-smelling person. I would have far paid more back when I was single and lonely.
I would like that too. After a surgery a few years I sometimes have post nasal drip which causes bad breath. I have no way to tell when this happens. I would love a sensor that could detect it.
According to your sibling, there are already off-the-shelf sensors that detect some malodors. Maybe we just need to source already-existing components and convince an EE/manufacturing engineer to do a kickstarter?
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#23With all the talk about healthcare these days I wonder as an experiment what a "machine" could detect if you gave it saliva,urine,stool,hair sample.
Privacy concerns aside I would assume many basic medical issues could be diagnosed through those without the need for a "doctor".
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#24I work for Owlstone Medical as a software engineer, so ask me any questions and I'll try to answer as best I can. Also, we're hiring! https://www.owlstonemedical.com/about/careers/
Any chance you might come out with a model that detects body odor or mouth odor?
Given them mentions of cancer in this thread, do you already have in place a policy to avoid accidentally advertising a cancer cure in the UK (which is illegal)?
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like that too. After a surgery a few years I sometimes have post nasal drip which causes bad breath. I have no way to tell when this happens. I would love a sensor that could detect it.
According to your sibling, there are already off-the-shelf sensors that detect some malodors. Maybe we just need to source already-existing components and convince an EE/manufacturing engineer to do a kickstarter?
The problem is that you need to know what chemical you are looking for that's causing the smell. Are there any sensors that can detect a wide range of smells?
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#26I work for Owlstone Medical as a software engineer, so ask me any questions and I'll try to answer as best I can. Also, we're hiring! https://www.owlstonemedical.com/about/careers/
Thanks. How does your tech work? Very interesting.
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#27tangential, but in HK airport you're passively screened for a high temperature at all entrances to combat the spread of flu.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/28/content_1127068...
Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Odours are just molecules that are detected by the cells in our noses, and it's possible to identify them with various techniques. You've probably heard of mass spectrometry, which tells you the mass to charge ratio of the molecules that are present in a sample. You can figure out which molecules they are by looking up the m/z value in a database -- but mass spectrometers are pretty bulky. There's also a technique ca…
"Odours are just organic molecules" Yeah. Right. This is why Yeah. Right. This is why H2S has no smell. (in fact, some claim is has not and we smell something else). "that are detected by the cells in our noses, and it's possible to identify them with various techniques." Well, I think this was not the question. Yes, the mentioned start-up in this thread (owlstonemedical) uses a "Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectro…
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Re: One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick
#29I work for Owlstone Medical as a software engineer, so ask me any questions and I'll try to answer as best I can. Also, we're hiring! https://www.owlstonemedical.com/about/careers/
Any chance you might come out with a model that detects body odor or mouth odor? Given them mentions of cancer in this thread, do you already have in place a policy to avoid accidentally advertising a cancer cure in the UK (which is illegal)?
>Any chance you might come out with a model that detects body odor or mouth odor?
Very unlikely in the short to mid-term. While it would be possible to gather enough data to train the algorithms to detect mouth or body odours, our chemical analysers are not yet practical for hand-held use. We're working on that though.
>do you already have in place a policy to avoid accidentally advertising a cancer cure in the UK (which is illegal)?
We're developing a lung cancer screening test meant to be administered in a primary or secondary point of care, so it's not something that could be advertised as a cancer cure. Even if our test came back as positive, the patient would be referred for a CT scan or similar. The idea is to have a non-invasive test to increase the compliance rate and detect the cancer earlier. That alone increases the chance of survival quite dramatically.