Funded by a grant from the
European Commission, the SNIFFPHONE project will link Prof. Haick’s
acclaimed breathalyzer screening technology to the smartphone to provide
non-invasive, fast and cheap disease detection. It will work by using
micro- and nano-sensors that read exhaled breath and then transfer the
information through the attached mobile phone to an
information-processing system for interpretation. The data is then
assessed and disease diagnosis and other details are ascertained.
The technology is supported by a
recent €6 million (US$6.8 million) grant to the consortium to expand the
“electronic nose” breathalyzer technology that Prof. Haick has been
developing since he joined the Technion in 2006. That technology can
identify individuals from the general population who have a higher
likelihood for contracting a specific disease, and treat them in advance
or at an early stage.
The entities participating in the
winning consortium include Siemens; universities and research
institutes from Germany, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Latvia; and
Israeli company NanoVation-GS Israel. NanoVation-GS is a Technion
spin-off headed by Dr. Gregory Shuster and Sagi Gliksman, who are both
graduates of Prof. Haick’s laboratory. Prof. Haick serves as Chief
Scientific Officer.
“The SNIFFPHONE is a winning
solution. It will be made tinier and cheaper than disease detection
solutions currently, consume little power, and most importantly, it will
enable immediate and early diagnosis that is both accurate and
non-invasive,” says Prof. Haick. “Early diagnosis can save lives,
particularly in life-threatening diseases such as cancer.”
Prof. Haick, a member of the
Technion Faculty of Chemical Engineering and a researcher at the
Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, is recognized in the
scientific and academic world for his “electronic nose” research. He
has received more than 40 prestigious awards and honors, including the
Marie Curie Excellence Award, the ERC (European Research Council) Award,
the Discovery Award of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the
Halevy Award for Innovative Applied Engineering. He was made a Knight
of the Order of Academic Palms by the French government, and has been
chosen for numerous “best of” lists including the MIT Technology
Review’s TR35 (listing the world’s top 35 young scientists).