Exhalation Technology Ltd
Competition Sponsor: EIT Health of the European Union
Awardee Year: 2024
Lung cancer poses an enormous burden for patients, families, systems, and caregivers. It causes most cancer-related death worldwide and ranks first in direct and indirect cancer-related health costs. These are the consequences of diagnosis at late disease stages. To drive early detection, when curative treatment is available, lung cancer screening programs are rolled out deploying LDCT scanning for early detection of tumours. However, due to cost and capacity constraints they are only offered to people at highest risk of developing lung cancer, typically with heavy smoking histories. Yet, detection rates remain and up to 99% are scanned for no reason, driving up costs and challenging health economy. Further, high false positive rates (benign nodules are detected) cause anxiety and additional costs. Finally, 35% or more of all new lung cancer cases are found in individuals not eligible for lung cancer screening by current criteria, including never-smokers. Our technology, Inflammacheck® is a first of its kind, non-invasive, cost-effective, easy-to-use, early-stage lung-cancer screening tool for Point of Care. It tests for multiple biomarkers in breath, supporting decentralized and inexpensive pre-screening in community settings. Pre-screening with Inflammacheck® to qualify individuals for lung cancer screening by LDCT scanning will drive up detection rates, drive down false positive rates, and enable broader screening coverage. To the benefit of patients, relatives, and societies, all while improving health economy. Moreover, our platform technology is easily adapted to diagnose other respiratory conditions that currently lack rapid diagnostic options, such as COPD, asthma, and pneumonia.