CITRIS projects at Berkeley and Santa Cruz using cell phones as a healthcare platform are among the projects supported by a recent Microsoft Research initiative.
CellScope: Portable Low-cost Imaging for
Disease Diagnosis
Daniel Fletcher, University of California,
Berkeley, USA
Effective healthcare requires reliable patient data and a trained physician
to interpret the data and guide treatment. In many developing countries,
bringing those two components together – reliable data and trained physicians –
is a tremendous challenge. Healthcare personnel are frequently under-trained and
under-equipped, often facing excessive patient loads with minimal equipment.
Light microscopy is one of the most important clinical tools for routine
examinations. However, high-quality light microscopes commonly available in the
developed world are rarer than physicians in some developing countries. We are
working to turn the camera of a cell phone into a clinical-quality light
microscope that can transmit images of patient samples remotely for evaluation
by specialists. Such a cell phone microscope – which we call the CellScope –
will address both healthcare data collection and diagnosis problems in
developing countries by linking the two through wireless communication.
Virtual Speech Therapist for Stroke Survivors
with Aphasia in Rural Malaysia
Sri Kurniawan, Dominic
Massaro, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
In Malaysia, 40,000 people suffer from stroke every year. Post-stroke
treatment focuses mainly on mobility therapy with a poor rehabilitation program
for stroke-acquired aphasia, a communication impairment that involves at least
some form of deficit in language comprehension. Lack of immediate and regular
access to speech therapy is one of the reasons that only 30% of stroke survivors
claimed only part recovery, with the problem more pronounced with those living
in rural areas. This project aims at developing cell phone-based communication
therapy for stroke survivors with aphasia living in rural Malaysia using an
animated virtual tutor.