Has the solution to combat malaria been under our nose the whole time?

Recently I came across this TED Talk describing how they have figured out that we release a specific body odor that attracts mosquitoes to be more fond of us when we have the malaria parasite. Later throughout the talk, they realized that they could train dogs with an 80%+ success rate to smell out the infected individuals. That is much higher than the standards, where only 70% is needed. And finished off the talk with open question on how we could use today's technology to expedite the detection rate.

They purposed that we could either use smartwatches or patches that could detect these body odors and I will take a look at the latter, because it is cheaper to mass produce these "patches" over smartwatches. Especially, when considering that the largest population that is infected yearly live in the poorest regions of the world.

How could this patch potentially look like?

When designing this device, you would want it to be easily applicable and have a long enough life span such that it wouldn't be destroyed with your next movement. The first thing that would come to mind are band aids and the second thing temporary tattoos.

Diving deeper into the tattoo realm, next you would need to apply a sensor onto it. This is where e-tattoos or more specific Biostamps. They already have Biostamps that can detect:

- UV exposure and temperature,
- perspiration and biochemistry, and
- blood pressure.

That means that the technology already exists. The only thing that still would need to be done, is configure the specs, since body odor is a biochemical process.

What does this mean for the future?

If we could catalog illnesses by their odor that they produce in us, we could potentially find a quicker way to diagnose illnesses without going through the process of drawing blood.