Here is a cool invention that turns an ordinary Sony Ericsson cellphone into a mobile medical lab. Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA used off-the-shelf parts costing $50 to produce remarkable images of particles in a small sample of fluid. The amazing thing about this is that the cellphone can be loaded with accompanying algorithm that can then count microparticles in the photo faster than a human can. Alternately, the photos can be sent to a lab using the cellphone which can further analyze the sample and send a text message back with results. This innovation has immediate application in field medicine, disaster recovery efforts, and scores of rural and developing nations where there are fewer hospitals and healthcare is harder to reach.
