Towards the wize sniffer 1.1: a functional gas sensor for breath analysis

In this report, we describe the manufacturing of a device for breath analysis. Breath analysis offers a relatively inexpensive, rapid, and non-invasive method for detecting a variety of life habits and possible diseases. Our activity was focused on the design and functionality of the Wize Sniffer (WS), a new portable device for breath analysis limited to an effective number of substances. Within the European SEMEOTICONS (SEMEiotic Oriented Technology for Idividual's CardiOmetabolic risk self-assessmeNt and Self-monitoring) Project by the WS, we intend a hardware/software tool for both the analysis of volatile organic compounds of breath and a platform for data mining and data integration. The WS should be able to provide useful information about the "breathprint", i.e., the analog of fingerprint for the state of health of an individual, to be used in the Virtual Individual Map. In this first period of activity, the WS has been designed in two main configurations. One configuration to work with commercial sensors (that is going to be operative) and the other one configuration to work with customized sensors made using electrospun nanofibers as sensing material. This last configuration is still work in progress. The efforts for the design of the WS involved also statistical data processing.