Cough into your mobile phone for instant diagnosis
Software being developed by American and Australian scientists will hopefully allow patients simply to cough into their phone, and it will tell them whether they have cold, flu, pneumonia or other respiratory diseases.
Whether a cough is dry or wet, or “productive” or “non-productive” (referring to the presence of mucus on the lungs), can give a doctor information about what is causing that cough, for example whether it is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection.
Health workers can distinguish the different kinds of cough by sound. Now, it is claimed, the new software will do the same, and will save patients a trip to the surgery – or tell them when they are at risk of serious illness.
Rob 9:25 pm on March 11, 2010 Permalink
Now this is cool, but I am surprised they put this out before they have the data to see if it really works. Oh and did you notice the last para:
“STAR [the company doing this] has been given a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant of $100,000 (£60,000) to pursue the research, which is expected to be particularly useful in developing countries where pneumonia is a leading cause of death in children.”