Regina Garcia
The Department of Defense has tapped Owlstone Medical and Detect-ION to support its plan to develop a handheld device capable of detecting early infections by analyzing components of exhaled breath.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Defense Innovation Unit have established the EXHALE Program aimed at prototyping analytics devices to non-invasively detect and help alleviate the impact of respiratory disease transmission among deployed military personnel, DIU said Friday.
Under the three-year contracts, Detect-ION and Owlstone will join forces and work on exhaled breath diagnostics prototypes to meet DOD requirements.
Owlstone’s portable device will be designed to operate on battery power, allowing it to detect volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath, the company said in a separate release on Wednesday.
Lu Alvarez, program manager of EXHALE at DIU, emphasized the significance of the initiative.
“The rapid convergence of technologies from commercial industry has revealed new opportunities to exploit previously inaccessible biomarkers of infection, human health and performance,” said Alvarez.
