Hi John,
Generally speaking, illicit drugs can be identified using SCiO. However, an important factor to be taken into consideration are the concentration levels of the components within the drugs, as SCiO’s detection threshold varies by material, and is typically 0.1%-1%, and thefore unable to detect any components which are below its 0.1% detection threshold.
Please also note that SCiO is NOT a medical device and should not be used as such.
We have proven feasibility for pill differentiation with our pharmaceuticals application. However, we have not developed an illicit drug database and do not plan to do so in the foreseeable future. There is a vast combination of substances that can be present in various drugs and in order to build a working model an almost endless database of illicit drug combinations would need to be built. Moreover, if the substance were in a compressed powder form, it is quite possible that SCiO may miss the active ingredient if that part of the sample wasn’t scanned.
As with all potential applications, feasibility testing would need to be completed along with development of the corresponding molecular sensing models and a corresponding app.
To develop such an application will require a complete sample collection – which we will not be able to supply. Such an application may be developed by you, the developers community, using our SCiO Development ToolKit (DevKit).
Ayelet
The Consumer Physics Team