The 17 May Economist has a piece about how simple accessories can turn mobile phones into useful medical devices. The prompt for the article is work led by Dan Fletcher at the University of California. Here is an extract from the Telemicroscopy for Disease Diagnosis web site, with a picture of the prototype mobile phone microscope and an image of a blood sample taken with the device. (Seeing these pictures led me successfully to use some small binoculars as a telephoto lens for the camera on a phone.)
"The goal of this project is to bring modern diagnostic testing to remote regions cheaply and efficiently with telemicroscopy. The ability to capture images of, for example, malarial blood samples, infected skin, or ulcerous lesions, and then to send those images for remote diagnosis could drastically reduce both the cost and time of performing critical disease diagnosis – as well as provide early warning of outbreaks – in poverty stricken regions of the globe. In many developing countries with the greatest health needs, the infrastructure for cellular phones is expanding rapidly, opening the door for greater use of cell-phone-based healthcare devices. The project is actively developing a second-generation device for field testing in 2008."
Comments