Innovation Category Archive

A Breathalyzer that can Detect COVID-19

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

In the Netherlands, the Dutch health authorities are using a breathalyzer machine called the SprioNose to help detect COVID-19 cases. The machine works rather like an alcohol test in that it detects traces of the virus in the breath blown into the machine.

The health department state that in 70% of cases tested, the rapid test can determine with certainty that they are not infected with the coronavirus. For the remaining 30%, the results are not conclusive. If the breath test does not provide a definite negative result, the person will be given another test to find out if they are infected with coronavirus with the common PCR test.

The results only take a couple of minutes, and the screening capability means that many people can avoid the invasive nose swab and the related procedures for analysis, saving a few red noses and a lot of medical testing resources.

The SpiroNose technology was developed by the company Breathomix. The Leiden University Medical Centre and GGD Amsterdam (the health department) have thoroughly tested the SpiroNose at coronavirus test locations. At the moment, some 600 breath tests can take place every day in Amsterdam, but this will quickly increase to more than 2,500 breath tests per day. Moving forward, the rapid breath test will also be used in the rest of the Netherlands.

SpiroNose

Bring it on I say!

Open Source

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

Open Science

In November I presented at the Berlin Science week, as part of my training as an open science trainer. For more details and a review of the ORION Open Science Train the Trainer MOOC see here.

The course was great, good fun and informative, and as for the presentation…… See the video above!

The Journal of Responsible Innovation goes Open Access

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

Responsible Innovation

As regular readers will know, one of my main philosophical interests in life is related to innovation and responsibility. My posts on this blog, as well as my work collaborating with the Bassetti Foundation (an organization that the editorial team here have a close working relationship with) are all in some way related to questions about innovation and technology.

My interests come from a background in sociology, so they tend to be about the relationship between society and innovation, not about the innovations themselves. And I don’t want to suggest that there is a right and wrong to all of this. Innovation is neither wrong, nor necessarily right.

My fundamental question is really quite simple, although it comes in several parts:

Can innovation be more or less responsible? If it can be, how could it be steered to become more responsible if that is what we wanted to do?

Obviously then we have to think about what responsible might mean, what is responsible for you may not be responsible to me. And what is responsible today in one place, may not be responsible either tomorrow or in another place today.

I have been fortunate over the last 15 years that I have been working in this field to have met lots of people who share the same interests. Many are University professors, or work in governmental positions, think tanks and a host of other organizations, and there are a lot of publications related to my question. And of course there are lots of other more intricate questions generated by lots of different perspectives, positions and expertise.

The Journal

One of the major fonts has been the Journal of Responsible Innovation, and the new year brings a joyous gift, the journal has become Open Access. Not only are all new publications open access, but also all of the back catalogue.

If you have time and would like to know (a lot) more, I have been on the Editorial Board since the journal was founded and have reviewed every article published to date, all of which you can find here.

It’s still quite a read, but this collection of reviews offers an overview of the development of thinking in the field over the last 7 years.

To celebrate, I am going to dedicate a couple of months to writing about open access, open source and open science, and I will be putting up links to various articles from the Journal and beyond.

The Journal of Responsible Innovation is an academic journal with a twist. As the website demonstrates:

JRI invites three kinds of written contributions: research articles of 6,000 to 10,000 words in length, inclusive of notes and references, that communicate original theoretical or empirical investigations; perspectives of approximately 2,000 words in length that communicate opinions, summaries, or reviews of timely issues, publications, cultural or social events, or other activities; and pedagogy, communicating in appropriate length experience in or studies of teaching, training, and learning related to responsible innovation in formal (e.g., classroom) and informal (e.g., museum) environments.

So we can find people that we know from the blog writing film reviews (Stevienna de Saille), MOOC reviews (from myself), and reports from workshops (Jack Stilgoe). Not to mention hundreds of academic articles.

This is a high-level journal, now offering articles from world renowned figures, Open Access, for FREE.

Fill your boots!