New research shows that by just using your smartphone you can get a diagnosis for oxygen levels in your blood. How so? Smartphone images of your eyelid asses hemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying molecule in the blood).
"Our new mobile health approach paves the way for bedside or remote testing of blood hemoglobin levels for detecting anemia, acute kidney injury and hemorrhages, or for assessing blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia." said research team leader Young Kim from Purdue University. "The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased awareness of the need for expanded mobile health and telemedicine services."
Learn more about hemoglobin:
The app can make one of the most common lab evaluating tests simply done remotely and improve care in low-income regions without access to laboratories.
How does it work? It is based on software that transforms the smartphone camera into a hyperspectral imager with reliable measures of hemoglobin levels (a measure of the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood) without the need for any hardware modifications or accessories. The innovation address a major public health challenge—access to care.
"This new technology could be very useful for detecting anemia, which is characterized by low levels of blood hemoglobin," said Kim. "This is a major public health problem in developing countries, but can also be caused by cancer and cancer treatments."
Source: Science Daily
