Decoding Disease Detection – Presented by Claire Guest

Throughout history, dogs have fulfilled a range of different functions and canine roles have developed to include medical support and disease detection tasks, with growing evidence of elevated levels of a ‘signature’ volatile organic compound (VOCs) associated with disease. Medical Detection Dogs (MDD) charity, a pioneer of both medical assistance and remote disease detection remains committed to carrying out empirical research to improve operations, inform future medical technologies and improve the understanding of our relationship with dogs. Our Medical Alert Assistance Dogs use olfaction to alert and thereby provide day-to-day support for people living with life threatening conditions. Historically, most of our dogs were trained to alert to blood sugar changes for people living with Type 1 diabetes, but increasingly we place dogs with individuals with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS) and other cardiac conditions including non-epileptic attack disorder and Addison’s disease. Our ongoing monitoring suggests high levels of alerting accuracy and highly intuitive behaviours demonstrated by the dogs in partnerships. In addition, MDD have worked on NHS-approved clinical trials, exploring dogs’ ability to detect cancer, the malaria parasite, Parkinson’s disease, bacteria, and COVID-19. As medical usage expands, it is imperative that the value of our dogs is objectively assessed, and their potential capabilities are optimised to further disease diagnostics. 

 To better understand canine decision making, MDD works together with the Animal Computer Interaction Lab, (Open University), using technology which enhances the dog’s ability to communicate their degree of certainty when detecting disease from presented samples. This assists the interpretation of equivocal behaviours where the decision of the dog is unclear, and gives the dog an interface to provide further information to the handler.

Coming soon.