The Doctor Will Sniff You Now
It’s 2050 and you’re due for your monthly physical exam.
Times have changed, so you no longer have to endure an orifices check, a needle in your vein, and a week of waiting for your blood test results.
Instead, the nurse welcomes you with, “The doctor will sniff you now,” and takes you into an airtight chamber wired up to a massive computer.
As you rest, the volatile molecules you exhale or emit from your body and skin slowly drift into the complex artificial intelligence apparatus, colloquially known as Deep Nose.
Deep Nose’s massive electronic brain starts crunching through the molecules, comparing them to its enormous olfactory database.
Deep Nose is intended to match your odors to the medical conditions that cause them.
Your human doctor goes over the results with you and plans your treatment or adjusts your meds.
What can one’s odor tell about one’s health?
Apparently, a lot.
“Our evolution may not have designed us to diagnose disease,” Koulakov says, “but we can design a software that can do so.”
How fascinating is that?
Source – Article source – http://cshl.nautil.us/article/671/the-doctor-will-sniff-you-now