You will be able to self-diagnose a respiratory disease in a matter of seconds soon…using your cell phone. American and Australian scientists are working on a software that will allow users to simple cough at their cell phone speaker to identify what they are sick with among cold, flu, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases.
Cough characteristics, a dry or a wet cough, a productive or a non-productive cough, can give a doctor definite idea of what causes coughing. For example, cough can tell whether the cause is bacterial or viral infection. Health care specialists can distinguish different coughs by hearing. But now the software can do exactly the same thing. This will save time for patients who otherwise would have to spend it on seeing a doctor and will warn a sick person about possible complications.
Healthy, spontaneous cough is typically somewhat louder than a sickness-induced cough. As initial blasting sound fades away you can hear a vibration of vocal cords or phlegm noises which actually indicate what is happening to a patient’s respiratory system.
New software compares a patient’s cough with the data of cough sounds associated with all kinds of respiratory diseases. Doctors are optimistic about new software. The project received a $100,000 grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This software will be particularly useful in countries where pneumonia is a lead cause of high child death rates.
Source of the image: sxc.hu/profile/028.
