Personalised medicine is one of the new developments that is deemed to revolutionise health care. A key component is the detection of biomarkers, proteins in blood or saliva, for example, whose presence or abnormal concentration is caused by a disease.

Chances of survival of prostate cancer depend strongly on the stage at which the disease is diagnosed. Now scientists have developed new methods relying on an electronic nose and optoacoustics to improve the diagnosis techniques and avoid fatal treatment delays.