Olfactory Device for Large Scale Pre-screening for COVID-19.

Recent pandemic caused by COVID-19 has motivated lockdown in several countries for long duration and will have a long lasting impact on the social life and economics world wide. India is no exception although showing relatively delayed increase in number of cases. Multilayered diagnostics for mass scaled screening is inevitable during and especially after the peak is passed and life is moving towards normalcy. First level of screening currently used in India is mainly based on temperature and has possibility of false positives and false negative (fever as a symptom has not yet been developed although infected). We propose here another augmentation or an intermediate level of screening, depending on the usage, based on assessing olfactory functions. It is established with multiple publications reporting degrading (hyposmia) or loss of sense (anosmia) of smell for infected patients. This paper presents a recently developed technology and device that uses olfactory sense detection using a novel device that is capable of generating precise level of smell digitally, and repeatedly in contactless manner. The device is designed to work with a mobile app that can trigger selected smell or combinations and further can be programmed to give standard or customised smell tests. Estimated capital and running cost are low since one (out of 25) canister filled with of 0.1 ml volume of essential smell oil can serve hundreds of tests. The prototype is tested to work for a desired smell generation and is available for further tweaking for rapid screening of subjects as per the requirements.
(© Indian National Academy of Engineering 2020.)