Johns Hopkins students develop smell test for health problems

The ScentCare device [Image courtesy of Johns Hopkins]

Biomedical engineering students at Johns Hopkins are developing a device that could help clinicians detect and treat smell dysfunction earlier.

The system features two components — a cylinder case containing scented inhaler cartridges and a companion smartphone app that guides users through smell testing and retraining exercises. This straightforward approach requires no expensive equipment or fine motor movements, according to a post on Johns Hopkins’ website. This could make it potentially more accessible than other smell tests, especially for older adults.

“We focused on building something simple that does both testing and retraining with just one device, because there is no device that does both on the market yet,” said ScentCare team member Mili Ramani, a fourth-year biomedical engineering major. “The novelty is that this is much less cluttered and more standardized.”

Ramani began working on the project alongside fourth-year biomedical engineering major Angela Sadlowski as first-years. They wanted to find a solution for the lack of a sniff test (the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test — UPSIT) in routine health screenings.

“Before joining this project, smell wasn’t something I thought much about, it’s just something that I had,” said Ramani. “It’s an overlooked sense, and part of this project is spreading awareness about the importance of testing your sense of smell.”

Using ScentCare requires a sniff of the inhaler cartridge, followed by choosing the correct scent via a multiple-choice test on the app. The cartridges represent one of the four main scent families — woody/earthy, floral, citrus and herbal/spicy. The user’s final score can raise alarm for concern for clinicians, as smell loss is an early sign of viral infections like COVID-19, neurodegenerative diseases, brain diseases and even depression.

Ramani and Sadlowski say ScentCare could test people at high risk of Alzheimer’s disease, leading to earlier diagnosis.

The ultimate goal is to get the technology into clinics to make smell testing more common. They hope to get ScentCare into homes of those who could benefit from retraining. Ramani and Sadlowski have applied for patents and are currently recruiting participants for a clinical trial using the device with older adults, a cohort they selected because aging is a major cause of smell loss.

“The original course was about building skills and just coming up with a proof-of-concept. But this project ended up becoming translational and we started working with clinicians and on the business side,” said Sadlowski. “It’s been exciting to see how far it’s gone beyond the course and is closer to being in the real world. That’s more than I could have asked for.”