Cell Phone as a Platform for Healthcare Awards from MSR

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.