Wednesday 9 January 2013

iPhone app diagnoses respiratory disease by listening to you coughing


A smart application is being developed for the Apple iPhone, which lets you cough right in the microphone of the iPhone to diagnose respiratory disease.

Doctors generally classify coughs as wet or dry, with a subcategory of productive or nonproductive, a reference to the presence or production of mucous in the lungs. Most health care professionals can distinguish between the two kinds, and each kind gives subtle hints about whether a person has a bacterial or viral infection. Scientists think there is much more information hidden in coughs though, and are trying to tease out that information by analyzing specific sounds inside coughs.
The application has a database that contains cough samples. So, when you cough in the mic of the iPhone, it’ll make a comparison of your cough with the cough samples stored in the database. The database contains the sounds of all known respiratory diseases from people of both genders, and various ages and weights. The application needs to contain at least 1000 of the cough samples in order to make an effective comparison.
There isn’t any information about its availability and pricing yet. Anyway, the iPhone app could be useful, which allows you to check your own cough on the run, to possibly early detect if you’ve been infected by any respiratory diseases.
via gadgetvenue nextnature

No comments:

Post a Comment