Prof Chen Xiaodong’s group at IDMxS, NTU, in collaboration with Peking University School of Stomatology, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, and other partners, have proposed the Electrochemomics (EC-omics) strategy, a new sensing paradigm for at-home healthcare in the AI era.
EC-omics is a new diagnostic strategy developed at the Institute for Digital Molecular Analytics and Science (IDMxS) that transforms how metabolic changes in biofluids are analysed and used for disease diagnostics. Instead of targeting specific predefined biomarkers, EC-omics captures rich, networked electrochemical features at the biofluid-electrode interface, turning complex “matrix effects” into meaningful diagnostic signals that reflect the overall physiological and metabolic state. Using portable platforms with disposable CNT/bacterial cellulose electrodes and voltammetric scans, EC-omics enables decentralised, point-of-care testing suitable for clinics, homes, and resource-limited settings.
EC-omics complements traditional ‘omics’ such as NMR by providing orthogonal information on how the biofluid environment (pH, electrolytes, etc.) shapes electrochemical behaviour, thereby enriching metabolomic profiling. Demonstrated applications include saliva-based periodontitis diagnosis with 93% accuracy, as well as studies in urine for chronic kidney disease and serum for diabetes, positioning EC-omics as a key building block of future multi-modal, AI-driven health monitoring networks is paving the way for next-generation decentralized healthcare, offering a powerful, accurate, and accessible method for disease diagnosis and metabolic monitoring.
Read the paper here.