Breath analysis for the diagnosis and monitoring of respiratory tract infections

The world has seen significant changes over the past year with the outbreak of a major, global pandemic. One of the major lessons learnt is that rapid testing is critical to controlling and reducing the magnitude of such outbreaks. For Covid-19, swabs followed by a PCR test provided a solution, but often the results were slow and testing of the general population difficult. Therefore, new solutions are needed.

IMSPEX Diagnostics (www.imspex.com) is a leader in the development of diagnostics tools. Together with the BioMedical Sensors Laboratory at Warwick University (www.warwick.ac.uk/go/bsl) we are developing a point of care breath test to not only diagnose and monitor Covid-19 subjects, but also other infectious conditions. This will speed up widespread screening, improve diagnosis times and monitoring of the progression of the disease.

This project aims to support this activity, by helping to answer key scientific questions needed to make this approach a reality.