A computer game to identify malaria. A cellphone to diagnose disease. Aydogan Ozcan’s inventions can bring modern medicine to the world’s poorest regions.
What if your cellphone could check water and air for pollutants? Diagnose malaria or influenza? Funnel data into an interactive map?
That’s the vision of Engineering Professor Aydogan Ozcan: designing sophisticated, low-cost diagnostic instruments that piggyback on the camera, connectivity and GPS capacity of cellphones. He and his team are bringing 21st century medicine to the masses.
An inexpensive lens creates a cellphone microscope. A 3-D printer outputs a test chamber for water samples. A tube collects cookie crumbs to check for allergens. Most important, sophisticated software rapidly counts cells or compares the reaction of a chemical strip to a library of stored images.
The possible applications are legion. Worried about water pollution or airborne particles? Ask concerned citizens to collect samples, then aggregate the information on a map. Both the extent and intensity of the problem could be measured, and progress gauged over time.
“In the third world, where a lack of medical laboratory infrastructure often makes it difficult to diagnose and treat illnesses, the cellphone microscope holds the dual promise of mobility and fast results.”
Medical personnel in the field would get a preliminary diagnosis immediately, giving them the ability to begin treatment and potentially halt the spread of disease.
In a story in Smithsonian Magazine, Ozcan predicted that inventions like his are on the brink of wide adoption:
“Less than five years. It’s going to boom.”
Smithsonian Magazine story about Prof. Ozcan’s inventions