Playing detective: Predicting disease early

Health tech that predicts disease

Generally, the earlier the disease is diagnosed, the better. However, diseases like cancer can be hard to detect – hiding in our bodies before symptoms appear. Information about our health can be extracted from bioparticles in bodily fluids but this can be hard using existing techniques.

According to IBM Research, medical device labs-on-a-chip will become nano health detectives – tracing invisible clues in our bodily fluids and letting us know if we need to see a doctor. The goal is to shrink down to a single silicon chip all the processes necessary to analyse a disease that would normally be done in a lab.

At IBM Research, scientists are developing lab-on-a-chip nanotechnology that can separate and isolate bioparticles down to 20 nanometers in diameter, and potentially reveal disease before symptoms show.