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Breathalyzer That Detects Lung Cancer Early From a Single Breath Wins $100K Entrepreneurship Competition (mit.edu)
Lung cancer "breathalyzer," developed by a team of MIT and Harvard University students, has won $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The breathalyzer connects to a smartphone and is able to detect lung cancer early from a single breath, reports MIT News. From the report: Astraeus Technologies has developed a postage-stamp-sized device, called the L CARD, that detects certain gases indicative of lung cancer. When someone blows onto the device, a connected mobile app turns a smartphone screen red if those gases are present and green if they aren't. "The L CARD reacts and sends instantaneous information to the physician that further attention is required," Joseph Azzarelli, an MIT PhD student in chemistry said while a ripple of excitement spread through the crowd. Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer in the United States, causing more deaths than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined, according to the World Health Organization.
"The breathalyzer connects to a smartphone and is able to lung cancer early from a single breath"
I wonder if it can detect cancer with other, err, bodily gas flows...
Can you convince me that this isn't another scam like Theranos?
Ban cigarettes. Then you won't need early detection. There's no good reason for cigarettes of any form or tobacco to be legal. Can anyone give me any reason for those to be legal anywhere?
it will cost $10,000.00 to breathe into it. They do that, you know. And insurance will not cover it. They do that, you know.
> When someone blows onto the device, a connected mobile app turns a smartphone screen red if those gases are present and green if they aren't.
This miracle of science not available to color blind people. 8.5% of the population can just die already.
and any other doc-in-a-box.
Officer: You just blew twice the legal limit, your life is probably ruined now. oh, and btw.. you also have lung cancer.
...discussed at length here:
http://www.nature.com/articles...
You can buy a hell of a lot of dogs[1] for that amount of money!
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html/
One of the problems with such devices is that they don't report the percentage of false positives. This is a much bigger problem than false negatives, since there are more people who are negative (don't have lung cancer) than positive (have lung cancer). It's generally considered very bad to tell someone that they have cancer and then later say "Sorry, but we made a mistake." Though that's good news for them, they get upset that you told them the false bad news first. However, early diagnosis of lung cancer is an important area and if they made progress toward that then I applaud them.
Sounds like the thing just gives a binary yes/no reading. So why bother with the NFC and phone? Why not just have a red/green LED on the device itself?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
If I understand correctly what I'm reading about the biomarker gasses, it's not just the absence or presence of a gas or gasses, but the quantities, and the profile of those quantities in normal vs. diseased lungs. So, they're hooking it up to a pattern classifier. In the prototype stage you need a computer with a fair amount of power --- fortunately these days a smart phone will do. Down the road I imagine they could hook it up to a FPGA or six and eventually engineer it down to one chip, but that's a lot more engineering and likely years down the road.
Finding God in a Dog
Actually... since the tech behind it is based on these sensors and since dogs can already be trained to detect bacteria and prostate cancer by smell, while bladder cancer can be detected by smell as well...
The answer is probably yes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Now if the police really want to save lives (and not just revenue raise) they will incorporate this into random breath tests (RBT's)
My doc is starting to bug me about getting a colonoscopy. My wife did that a few years ago. The enemas/spending the night on the toilet is bad enough, but the thought of some dude (and a nurse, and some random tech, the secretary who needs a signature, the electrician adding an outlet, the Culligan guy replacing the water tank, and the gay guy with his phone out that just happens to be there cuz reasons) getting me doggy style while they run a camera from asshole to nostrils is just something I don't wanna do.
That said, my dad got polyps in his intestines all the time. Those ass cameras saved his life more than once. Somehow the thought of the guy who founded 3 churches and was asst pastor at one, on his hands and knees, with whatever tech they had in the 70s-90s, doesn't give me mental images I want to print on a 3D printer.
Lemme buy a $40 Guitar Hero kinda thing with some hardware and an app, tell me what to do, and mail it in. Long as you don't have forums named "Wow! Look at how bad that enema worked" and "Dang, that is the biggest ass cancer I've ever seen".
I'm a scientist and have worked in the sensor field for a long time. I have had students I've trained attempt this (commercial breath detection of cancer) with promising initial results. It's pretty easy to do the demo these guys are doing. It's very hard to do this with real people. The gap between cool academic demo and manufactured product is huge. The gap between product and FDA cleared diagnostic is even larger.
MIT isn't the only one working on this;
https://browncancercenter.louisville.edu/news-and-events/archive/drs.-bousamra-and-fu-develop-new-breath-test-for-lung-cancer
And now we just need a toilet that can detect colon, stomach and prostate cancer and we're good to go.
The Affordable Care Act makes it illegal to use ACA-compliant policy benefits to pay for early cancer screening in non-at-risk individuals. So, you can get this test, but you're going to pay out of pocket for it at full price.
That is, if they can ever get FDA approval. I'm sure the cancer drug makers will prevent that happening somehow, probably by buying this thing and making it disappear.
Theranos needs to start over by hiring these students.
Wouldn't it be earilier if they just detected the smoke instead?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
What? You thought it really cost $10.00 to manufacture a pack of cigarettes? $20.00 to distill a bottle of vodka? Or did you think these things were hard to get before the government began regulating their manufacture, distribution and sale?
Hopefully red/green color is not the only indicator of test results as doing so would violate a fundamental rule of UI design: never use color as the sole means of conveying a piece of information. The elderly, colorblind, and people with malfunctioning devices might interpret the results incorrectly.