There may well be an app for that, but there’s also a gadget or two for everything else. And checking for allergens now qualifies here, as well.
CES may be a regular assortment of TVs and speakers and headphones and the like, but it’s also a place where you can expect tech you didn’t know you needed, or even if you didn’t know how to ask a question to find out whether it existed.
Robots that can do your laundry and empty the dishwasher? Yep, it has that, and it also has a pocketable gadget to check whether your dinner might affect your allergies.
That’s one of the concepts being shown by French startup Allergen Alert at the world’s biggest technology show, arriving in a compact gadget designed to act like a miniature lab and check a sample for possible allergens or even gluten.
The system uses a single-use pouch for food samples, apparently processing protein extraction, detection, and analysis to provide details on whether it has allergens. Each pouch would be $10 USD individually or available through a subscription plan, with the device purchased separately.
As for whether it would even come to Australia, that’s an interesting question that would likely need to be answered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, also known as the TGA.
Australia’s regulator for health-related technology, Allergen Alert’s pocket lab would need to be approved, and that means it would also need to be proven to work, something health-related tech doesn’t always deliver on.
We’re waiting to find out whether the science of Allergen Alert holds up, though it is apparently based on technology by French healthtech maker BioMerieux, which has previously submitted items to the TGA for release locally (though also withdrawn others more recently).
Like most things CES, we suspect waiting will reveal whether this gadget is indeed real, or just another bunch of ideas and promises. For the sake of people who need gluten and allergy checks, we have to hope it is legitimate, and if it is, it could see launch later this year or sometime next.
