Early diagnosis is key for cancer patients. A high school student who battled and defeated cancer himself has invented a machine to help the early diagnosis of cancer.

Eighteen-year-old Emirhan Ilık won his battle against cancer thanks to his doctors, who managed to detect the cancer cells early. Inspired by his own illness, Ilık developed an early diagnosis machine which tells how far the cancer cells spread.

The machine analyses the frequencies that beam through the body and finds out which organs are affected by cancer cells and how far the disease has spread in the body.

The early diagnosis machine has won the winning title at the Science Olympics in Norway in 2017 and in the Netherlands in 2018.

The inventor Ilık said the idea for the machine first came to him when he was diagnosed with cancer five years ago. "As the disease was diagnosed three weeks before the critical stage, I was able to get better. After I was cancer free, I thought ‘I have to do something to help others;' hence, I made this machine. I hope this machine will save millions of lives once it can be mass-produced. I have received a patent for my machine from the Turkish Patent Institute."

Ilık is currently attending his last year at high school and aims to study medical engineering at university.