Computer scientist Shwetak Patel and his team are developing new sensing systems. The first focus was really around energy and water monitoring. They built a new generation of smart sensors that monitor electronic interference(干扰) on a home’s power line or water pressure changes in the system of pipes. Most of this technology has already found industrial applications. And Patel and his team turned their attention to adapting the technology for personal health monitoring.
“So how do we take this noise and make it into a signal of interest? That was a kind of the core of what we did for many years. And we’re taking that work and applying it to other fields.” said Patel. They’re looking to take advantage of all the practicality built into the smart phones. With the users’ permission, this app can use the microphone, built into most smart phones, to listen to background noises, such as coughing. “It will suggest you a trip to the doctor if necessary. We construct these models and try to understand how sound works. And we give it lots of examples of different kinds of sounds, like people talking, laughing, sneezing and of course coughing.”
This app also uses a phone’s camera to check haemoglobin(血红蛋白) levels in blood by analyzing the color of blood through the skin. Generally speaking, if you’re anemic, in other words, you have too few red cells in your blood, it is going to be a little less red. We take advantage of that by putting your finger over a camera of a phone. The camera of the phone can actually see the natural colors of the blood. In this way can a first-time parent learn about the level of jaundice(黄疸) in a newborn infant.
Researchers say the built-in sensors found in smart phones are already commonplace but their applications and their implications for our health and well-being may be more far-reaching than we ever imagined.
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