With the increase of smartphone apps volume, the extent of their capability has also increased tremendously. A recent one such app is the Lifelens project.
Focusing this time on the millions of people at risk from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world, Lifelens is a project that has created a smartphone app to diagnose the insidious, mosquito-borne disease.
Several million people die every year from Malaria, and roughly 85 % of them are children under the age of 5, the Lifelens project notes. Probably the most prevalent diagnostic tool, meanwhile, is the rapid diagnostic test (RDT), that is considered to be of a 60 percent incidence rate of false positive results. That, in turn, leads to the treatment of lots of people who don’t have Malaria, driving in the costs of anti-Malaria treatment significantly. The Lifelens project, on the other hand, aims to create the process both cheaper and much more accurate by analyzing blood digitally instead. Specifically, once blood is stained to reveal the Malaria parasites, the project’s smartphone app can analyze a magnified picture of a small amount of blood captured via simple finger prick, including counting the different types of cells it offers. Malarial parasites are the type of it can identify, making false results much less likely. Once analysis is complete, data is uploaded to the Web, where it can be mapped for any high-level view of where Malaria outbreaks are occurring.
The video below demonstrates Lifelens in action:
Melanoma and Malaria, of course, are just two of countless other afflictions that plague mankind. Mobile entrepreneurs: where else could smartphones be used to save lives?
Website: www.thelifelensproject.com