AKIPRESS.COM - Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU), Dubai Health Authority (DHA) and Breathonix Pte Ltd are currently carrying out a joint clinical trial to assess the accuracy of an easy-to-use breath test to detect COVID-19 within one minute, Emirates News Agency reported.

The trials are being conducted at DHA’s Nadd Al Hamar primary health care centre for 2500 patients.

Breathonix, a spin-off company from the National University of Singapore (NUS), has developed this test. The company previously conducted a Singapore-based pilot study that involved 180 patients and achieved a sensitivity of 93 percent and specificity of 95 percent with machine learning algorithm.

The technology is very simple to use. A person only needs to blow into a disposable mouthpiece connected to a high-precision breath sampler. The exhaled breath is collected into a breath sampler and fed into a cutting-edge mass spectrometer for measurement. A machine learning software analyses the volatile organic compound (VOC) profile and generates the result in less than a minute.