PocketLab

The following medical information, and the data we have produced has been verified by medical professionals and is accurate to the best of our knowledge.

Inspiration

Doctors in third world countries, perhaps without readily available big, expensive hospital equipment, are often unable to perform various diagnostic blood tests. Using just an iPhone and a $12 attachment, we enable doctors to perform these tests, such as centrifuging and microscopy.

It also doubles as an educational tool for trainee doctors with its built in sample data.

What it does

We have built a blood diagnostics tool kit that contains many features:

In order to perform a haematocrit (see the level of plasma/red blood cells), one must first centrifuge the blood. Using the accelerometer in the iPhone to track the progress, we allow the doctors to perform hand held centrifugation, resulting in the separating of the blood.

We use advanced image processing to analyse the results of the blood fractionation, to detect the ratios of the blood components, and to give a diagnosis accordingly. (For example, we can detect possible anaemia, by lack of red blood cells)

Using a combination of the microscope and image filtering, we can allow the doctors to look at blood smears using the iPhone. We are able to detect a range of diseases based on the data of the blood cells such as shape, variance and size, to give subsequent diagnoses.

By using the Epic platform, we can securely manage multiple patients' data; we enrich this by adding our blood samples to it.