The use of SMS texting to relay medical information is becoming more prominant in developing countries. An interesting new organization which I found today is called FrontlineSMS:Medic. The organization has built a network around SMS technology which is specfically targeted for developing countries.
For around USD $500.00 a laptop is placed in a central clinic and a number of cell phones are distributed to healthcare workers in the community. The network has been built using a free, open source software package which allows workers to communicate back to the central clinic where supplies, tests, drugs, etc. can be ordered.
This organization again goes to show that technology which is commonplace can be used in a variety of innovative ways to help people across the world.
Researchers at the University of Utah have been able to replicate technology commonly reserved for hard drives to test for infectious diseases; using the principle of giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which states that the electrical resistance of a particle will change when an external magnetic field is applied.
Using this technology, small samples of blood, urine, or saliva can be injected into a credit card sized device and infectious diseases have the potentional to be detected. This technology could further lead to increased point-of-care diagnostics with testing times on the order of minutes compared to hours.
Preliminary prototypes have shown that the technology is sensitive enough to detect 800 microscopic particles in a given sample. However researchers Marc Porter and Michael Granger believe with further modification single particles have the potential to be detected.
More can be found in the release here.
Early this year I had the chance to attend an entreprenurial seminar by George Whitesides at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He provided some very interesting advice to the startup entrepreneur (such as myself oneday). Included in this was a couple of homey words of advice, including making sure that each device you create “Solves a Problem”. I can not underestimate the importance of this. As this website continues to showcase inventions and innovative solutions, we have to ensure that we are solving a problem and displaying products that are going to become useful.
Another piece of advice that he gave was “Make simplicity an intimate business policy.” He has done exactly this with the creation of Paper Diagnostics. By combining microfluidics and one of the world most plentiful commodities–paper–Whitesides group has developed a method to test for infectious diseases using a single drop of blood or urine. When the sample is introduced microfluidics takes over and the sample is mixed with reagents which generates visable reactions. The results are then compared with a reference and a diagnosis is administered.
Microscopes is a basic diagnostic tool which many hospitals in developing countries go without. Cellscope is a solution to which is accomplished through the exploitation of cell phones (noticing a trend?). The cellscope was developed by a team at Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC-Berkley.
By attaching approximately $75 worth of parts traditional cellular cameras can be have 5-50x zoom. This allows the abillity to have a clinical quality microscope for little overhead. The group is in prelimary stages, but they have however been able to obtain clinical quality images through this method. Also once collected images can be transmitted using the cellular technology to remote locations where clinicans can further analyze the data.
The Moca team at MIT has seemed to come up with an interesting application of telemedicine using the Google Android software platform. The Moca team was able to use the Google Android API to develop an application which allows medical practitioners to communicate to a central server through their mobile device. In the field, trained users collect data such as qualitative measurements, images, and voice descriptions. Once the data has been transferred users can:
1) Request a trained physican look at the data and make a decision.
2) Store the data in an OpenMRS database
This type of integration is the technology that is going to take medical care to the next level. I’ve been trying to find the open-source software platform, but I have not had any luck thus far. Hopefully more to come later.