One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You’re Sick

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.

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 Spectrometer", might work, but I am not too impressed by the approach. Also, would not call this a detection of "scent".

Would be more impressed if they really build an artificial nose that can smell. They eye has not receptors to detect dogs, chairs, cars but detects a spectrum. Same with the ear and actually, the same with the nose. The literature is out there.