Snivid: rapid olfactory test for diagnosis orientation

Inspiration

As the days pass, MD and researchers around the world keep accumulating more and more evidence about the COVID 19 pandemic. An interesting and potentially quite useful fact began to emerge from various anecdotal reports from ENT specialists – a high percentage of patients diagnosed with COVID were also presenting symptoms of hyposmia (reduced ability to smell) or anosmia (loss of smell). Hence, smell dysfunction could be a useful tool in order to determine if a patient suffers from this illness, and a way to differentiate COVID 19 from other similar respiratory illnesses such as the flu or rhino-pharyngitis. CC-SITest is an olfactory test based on the UPSITest which is a smell identification test and as such is able to evaluate olfaction’s sensitivity. This test is designed to be fast and to work with all patients, regardless of their country of origin.

What it does

Our device will allow users to assess their sense of smell in a cheap, fast and efficient manner. The score obtained will be able to either help physicians make their diagnosis of COVID 19 -and thus assist with triage- or reassure people about their health and thus free emergency services.

How I built it

It is an olfactory test based on CC-SIT. All tests are made of cardboard and contain 12 different microencapsuled universal smells.

Challenges I ran into

As it is our first Hackathon, each step provided its own challenge. We had to ponder over various aspects of this technology: law, finances, materials, the manufacturing process... Nevertheless, our hardest challenge was to be able to design the cheapest possible test without taking the risk of losing the key factors that are repeatability and reproducibility.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

First of all we were proud to be able to participate in such a Hackathon, which will be able to bring innovating ideas from all around Europe in order to deal with the unprecedented global pandemic that is the Covid 19. Our biggest accomplishment was to be able to build on an older technology so as to achieve the creation of a cheap and easy-to-use device able to help in the diagnosis of Covid 19. Such a fast and cheap mean could ideally be distributed and used in every pharmacy around the world so as to help control the epidemic.

What I learned

We learned how to design a product, how to modify an already existing manufacturing process, about marketing, UX design and various legislations around Europe.

What's next for Smell dysfunction COVID-19 diagnosis

Test and develop the prototype
Clinical testing
Open-source database in order to give every medical platform access to the test
Link test results to a world-wide database in order to help research about Covid 19
Use this test for other illnesses

Built With

hardware

Submitted to

The European Commission's EUvsVirus Hackathon

Created by

It was my first hackathon, I worked as a Product designer. My missions was to study the technical aspects related to the implementation of our product and the optimization of its appearance to make it easier to use and manifacture.

Dassine Zouaoui
It was the first time I participated in a hackathon. I had the role of Graphic Designer in this beautiful project: I created the design of the SNIVID, the logo, the various drawings and icons and I also managed the presentation of the various documents of this project. I had to use Adobe Illustrator: it was the first time, so it was difficult in the beginning, but I learnt a lot and I'm glad of the work we did on this project.

Gaëlle G.
As a Team leader I did manage our group dynamic to ensure a cohesion between team members and distribute the work regarding each member skills and preference.

I also did help on the metrology and flavouring parts of the project.

Maxime Christophe
Working in a start-up since 2016 as an engineer. I'm used to develop simple and easy to use tools to ease my coworker work.
As it was my first hackathon, I worked as a Product designer. I tried to create a simple, ergonomic & efficient device. I also studied the manufacturing process.

FLINOIS Elora
Biomedical engineer student
My first Hackathon. I was the Communication Manager. I improved the wording of the text and translated it in English. Moreover, I worked on making our project impactful considering the current situation. I also contributed further to the project with my knowledge in the biomedical field and my engineering skills.

Dounia Zamiati