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Founded in 2022, Diagnosis blends canine olfaction with AI algorithms to detect diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 at early stages with high accuracy.
The company says its approach is grounded in over 20 years of peer-reviewed research, affirming that dogs can detect diseases based on changes in volatile organic compounds in breath, urine, or sweat.
In the fight against life-threatening illnesses, early detection often makes all the difference. While most health-tech innovations rely solely on machines, a Bengaluru-based startup is proving that nature’s most powerful sensor — a dog’s nose — when combined with artificial intelligence, can transform medical diagnostics.
Meet Dognosis, a pioneering early-stage startup blending canine olfactory power, brain-computer interfaces (BCI), and artificial intelligence (AI) to create scalable, breath-based disease detection. Founded in 2022, Diagnosis blends canine olfaction with AI algorithms to detect diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 at early stages. The startup trains specially selected dogs to identify unique volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in human breath, sweat, or urine samples. These signals are then cross-verified and enhanced using AI models, ensuring higher accuracy rates.
How Do Dognosis Detect Diseases?
- DogSense (Canine BCI): A custom-fit, non-invasive EEG headset that captures high-resolution neural signals from a dog while sniffing breath samples.
- DogOS (AI Platform): Integrated software that fuses EEG data with behavioral cues and sensor inputs, powering real-time disease-prediction models.
- SniffSpace: Automated “olfactory console” for managing breath-based workflows — with precision sample handling to ensure consistency and scalability.
“Our current focus is developing an ultra-affordable, non-invasive breath-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test. Our system combines trained dogs’ exceptional olfactory abilities with brain-computer interfaces and machine learning to create quantitative signatures of disease volatilomes. Patients simply breathe into a mask for 10 minutes, which is then shipped over to our labs to be analyzed in our controlled laboratory setting,” according to the company’s website.
Dognosis is developing Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) tests that are:
Accurate: Early trials report nearly 96-98% sensitivity in detecting up to 10 cancers—even in early stages, outperforming many existing diagnostic tools.
“Our preliminary results show 98% accuracy in detecting 10 types of cancers, significantly outperforming traditional screening methods,” Dognosis said on its website.
Accessible & Affordable: A simple breath test that’s more than 10× cheaper than conventional cancer-screening packages.
Practical: Breath samples remain potent even after being sealed and transported, allowing remote sample collection and centralized analysis.
Science Meets Compassion
The company said its approach is grounded in over 20 years of peer-reviewed research, affirming that dogs can detect diseases based on changes in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath, urine, or sweat.
Dognosis treats its canine collaborators ethically — dogs are interns from shelters or reputable kennels, selected for temperament and trained gently. They thrive on enrichment and live with caring handlers, not treated as test subjects.
The Team Behind the Innovation
The company was co-founded by cognitive scientist Akash Kulgod, trained at UC Berkeley, and Itamar Bitan, former K9 unit commander in the Israeli Defense Forces. It comprises a team of 11-50 innovators spanning neuroscience, engineering, clinical operations, and software.
The startup has advisors like Dr. Benny Chain from UCL in computational immunology.
Traction & Outlook
The startup has been featured in deep tech spotlights like Ficci Heal 2024, with early validation pilots underway in hospitals such as those in Hubballi, India.
Haris is Deputy News Editor (Business) at news18.com. He writes on various issues related to personal finance, markets, economy and companies. Having over a decade of experience in financial journalism, Haris h…Read More
Haris is Deputy News Editor (Business) at news18.com. He writes on various issues related to personal finance, markets, economy and companies. Having over a decade of experience in financial journalism, Haris h… Read More
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