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NaNose Medical and BrainChip Innovation
Semico recently published an article in our March, 2021 IPI Newsletter detailing a press release between NaNose (Nano Artificial Nose) Medical and BrainChip in which they jointly announced a new system for medical diagnosis COVID-19. This system used an artificially intelligent nano-array based on molecularly modified gold nanoparticles and a random network of single-walled carbon nanotubes paired with the Akida neuromorphic AI processor from BrainChip.
Using a non-invasive breathalyzer approach, this system collects Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOC’s) given off by long list of diseases and passes these chemicals past the AI nano-array sensor and used the Akida neuromorphic processor to analyze the data, giving the results almost immediately with 86% accuracy.
Each of these technologies is projected to have great positive impacts on our society and economies in the near future. How much better then to detail the marriage of metamaterials and AI in this system as an impressive first step in that direction. In addition to the great achievement of being able to detect the COVID-19 virus non-invasively, this technology pairing can also detect a range of other diseases simultaneously with similar results.
The table below shows the other diseases that are detectable by the nano-array sensor and the BrainChip neuromorphic AI processor.
List of Diseases Detected by NaNose Medical Nano-array Sensor
| COVID-19 | Crohn’s disease (CD) |
| lung cancer (LC) | ulcerative colitis (UC) |
| colorectal cancer (CRC) | irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) |
| head and neck cancer (HNC) | idiopathic Parkinson’s (IPD) |
| ovarian cancer (OC) | atypical Parkinsonism (PDISM) |
| bladder cancer (BC) | multiple sclerosis (MS) |
| prostate cancer (PC) | pulmonary hypertension (PAH) |
| kidney cancer (KC) | Pre-eclampsia toxemia (PET) |
| gastric cancer (GC) | chronic kidney disease (CKD) |
Source: Semico Research and NaNose Medical
The features that attracted NaNose Medical to use the BrainChip processor were low power, high performance, low cost and can function as a complete solution removing the need for external CPUs, memory or accelerator chips. Elements that are essential to the further development of this technology into a cost-effective, handheld diagnostic system that is easily deployable worldwide. This innovation points the way to other possible pairings of AI with dissimilar technologies to enter a whole host of different applications and markets where the selection of the right elements and identification of the right use-cases opens up many new areas of improvement through better sensing, testing and analysis of data.
Semico applauds NaNose Medical and BrainChip for this innovation and look to see many more from them and others in the future.