Medical Detection Dogs is at the forefront of innovative research into dogs' ability to detect the smell of human diseases and save lives.

Jamie Baird will be telling us how Medical Alert Assistance Dogs support individuals with complex health conditions and who have limited awareness of an impending life-threatening medical event. These dogs are provided to clients by the charity or can be dogs owned by clients. Using their amazing sense of smell, dogs can be trained to identify minute odour changes emitted prior to a medical emergency and alert the person to take preventative action.

We hope you will be able to join us for this very interesting talk.

Please let us know if you have an allergy or any other phobias about dogs, although we can assure you that this one is as gentle as can be.

The following is a quote from Medical Detection Dogs.

"The dog’s nose is the best bio-sensor we know of.  Our 2014 research indicated that our dogs were capable of detecting tiny traces (around one part per trillion – the equivalent of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic sized swimming pools) of the odour created by different diseases.

Our pioneering work is focused on understanding how these highly trained disease detectors could expand the world of diagnosis through the recognition of volatiles. We are confident that dogs will be able to help scientists and medics develop faster and cheaper ways to detect diseases, such as cancers, neurological diseases and bacterial infections much earlier than is currently possible.

We have always focused on establishing a strong evidence base and work closely with fellow researchers, academic institutions, both in the UK and internationally, and NHS Trusts. We have published several peer reviewed papers about our work, and the list continues to grow.

We believe that our work will have global impact and lead to earlier and much improved detection of cancer and other deadly diseases, as well as contributing to the fight against anti-microbial resistance".