What's up Doc?

I continue with my search for the newest and most useful use ways to use mobile technology. This week I found two articles that focus on medical advances with mobile devices. The first article addresses how the cameras in smart phones can use your fingers to monitor heart rates and other vital signs. Here's an excerpt:

" Android app that measures not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation - all through a finger against the lens. Measurements made by the app are said to be as accurate as those obtained using standard medical monitors."

Are we going to become our own doctors? Much more remains to be researched but this shows a great potential for doctors to monitor and check up on their patients , whenever, wherever they are. I can imagine the app alerting your doctor about any high risk event that shows up on your ECG.

In another related application for the mobile platform I found research being conducted by MITRE to use the camera lens to detect early stages of various diseases by scanning the eye. An app called EyesFirst is in development. Details about the project can be found here:



Here's a quick read about the article:

"In a project called EyesFirst, MITRE's Center for Transforming Health is developing automated methods to detect the early stages of multiple diseases from information contained in 3-D retinal images. When the methods are fully developed, clinicians around the world will be able to use capabilities developed by the EyesFirst project to non-invasively detect conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

"There's growing evidence that changes in the retina correlate with the onset and progression of certain diseases," says Salim Semy, a lead software systems engineer at MITRE and principal investigator on the project. "The biggest problem with treating these diseases is detecting them early enough. For example, more than 25 percent of diabetic adults are undiagnosed primarily because they haven't been screened for it. This often leads to irreversible vision loss that could have been prevented."

Both of these articles point out the use of mobile apps to advance the capbilities of smartphones. Indeed, we can all benefit from such advances. As the saying goes.... An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A $35 Tablet?

This is may sound completely insane to all of us in the Western World, but imagine for a second the impact of such a product and what it does for people in rural India who, as it is today, seem like they are stuck in the agricultural revolution. The social implications and economic ramifications are profound in my opinion. India is already a nation that is on the rise and competing intensely with China. And this product is certainly an example of that.

While it's not designed to compete directly with the iPad like the Kindle fire it clearly supports the mantra of "one tablet per child" that many social entrepreneurs support. These devices while partially subsidized by the Indian government are being deployed to support educational initiatives. Functional with only basic capabilities like email, social networking and browsing still can be accomplish more than on mobile devices. It's definitely not hardware equipped to compete with an iPad or similar horsepower tablet. But it can certainly bring knowledge and communication to the poor. Here's an excerpt...

Today we reach to the sky and demonstrate what is possible," said Kapil Sibal, India's information technology and human resource development minister. "Let me send a message, not just to our children but the children of the world: This is for all those who are marginalized."

The 13-ounce touch-screen device can handle basic computing, including email, social networking, surfing, online banking, instant messaging and multimedia. The stripped-down system uses Google's Android 2.2 operating system and comes with headphones, Wi-Fi access, two USB slots, 256 megabytes of internal memory and a 7-inch screen. It is not considered on the same level of the more advanced tablets available to consumers.

"This will allow basic computing beyond the mobile phone," said Vishal Tripathi, an analyst with Gartner, a high-tech research firm.