Use Your Cell Phone To Diagnose Blood Diseases 63
A group of research engineers at Berkeley have developed a mobile phone microscope that can photograph microbes in your blood, and analyze them for disease. The group hopes the device will be useful to doctors in developing countries to diagnose blood diseases in the field. The device uses a phone attachment with an LED, and magnified images are fed into the cell phone camera. Software installed on the phone analyzes bacterial counts, or the images can be sent to labs for quick analysis. UC Berkeley bioengineer Dan Fletcher led the CellScope research team. He said, "The same regions of the world that lack access to adequate health facilities are, paradoxically, well-served by mobile phone networks. We can take advantage of these mobile networks to bring low-cost, easy-to-use lab equipment out to more remote settings . . . We had to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we needed to spend many thousands on a mercury arc lamp and high-sensitivity camera to get a meaningful image. We found that a high-powered LED — which retails for just a few dollars — coupled with a typical camera phone could produce a clinical quality image sufficient for our goal of detecting in a field setting some of the most common diseases in the developing world."
Re:One has to wonder (Score:4, Informative)
1) Cheap equipment is a bit worse. It might not impact performance at all, but chances are, some sue-happy person might win malpractice case thatnks to 'subpar equipment used'. Cheap in this case can be pretty expensive.
2) Costs are directly transalted to customer. And people will pay a LOT when their health is concerned. So, if customers can afford to pay you for expensive stuff ... you might as well let em pay because your profit margins can be bigger. Simply, you can have lab test cost 10$ and add margin of say 5$, or you can have lab test costing 100$ and add margin of 50$.
3) Expensive stuff means more profit for equipment makers (bigger price -> bigger margins). Enough to be able to advertize and add little, hmm, personal incentive to buy pricey stuff.
4) And sometimes, you really DO need that expensive stuff because it can make difference between life and death.
Re:Paradox? (Score:2, Informative)
It's not only low-hanging fruit, but developing nations are, by definition, poor. If you string up 5 miles of copper phone line during the day, it's a sure bet that it will be pulled down that night. It's practically impossible to prevent, and copper is easily turned into cash. Ask anyone who's ever attempted a network build-out in one of the less advantaged regions of the world.