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Respiratory Illnesses Now Diagnosed by Your Mobile

Respiratory Illnesses Now Diagnosed by Your Mobile It may soon be possible to diagnose respiratory illnesses by just coughing into your mobile phone, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The breakthrough has come from new software developed by American and Australian scientists. To be able to quickly diagnose respiratory illnesses such as colds, flu or pneumonia, patients will be asked to cough into their mobile phones.

Doctors will be then able to glean information about the causes of the patient’s cough by whether it is wet or dry, “productive” or “unproductive” or whether the cough is due to a viral or bacterial infection.

The terms “productive” or “unproductive” are references to the presence of mucous on the lungs.

The new software will take the place of health workers who have been trained to listen out for the particular sound of a cough and be able to distinguish between them. In this way, patients will not need to go to see their doctor for this kind of diagnosis and they will be alerted to the risk of serious illness.

Suzanne Smith on behalf of the company STAR Analytical Services, which has been carrying out the research said: “Why haven't we been measuring coughs? It’s the most common symptom when a patient presents, and we are relying on doctors and nurses with good old technology from the 19th century.”

The new software for mobile phone diagnosis will not be held to be absolutely reliable until the STAR team increases its database of patients to around 1,000. At present, the software is run on computer but is likely at some stage to be rewritten as an application for smartphones.



Industry News posted by Marilyn on 10 November 2009

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Is this a joke?

Comment posted by Anonymous on 20/11/2009 16:10:44

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