A phone so smart it sniffs diseases

A research consortium headed by Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is developing a product that, when coupled with a smartphone, will be able to screen the user’s breath for early detection of life-threatening diseases.​

Funded by the European Commission, the Sniffphone project will link a breathalyzer screening technology to the smartphone. This makes the smartphone able to provide non-invasive, fast and cheap disease detection. The Sniffphone works by using micro- and nano-sensors that read exhaled breath. The sensors transfer the information through the attached mobile phone to an information-processing system for interpretation. The data is assessed and disease diagnosis and other details are ascertained.

The technology is supported by a recent €6 million grant to the consortium to expand the “electronic nose” breathalyzer technology. The big advantage of the smart nose and phone is that it can identify specific disease much sooner for specific groups of people. And by tracking them sooner doctors are able to treat them in advance or at an early stage.