Improved Lung Function and Blood Screening With a Smartphone

August 16, 2017 – Earlier this week Google announced its newest acquisition to its growing mobile health monitoring portfolio: Seattle based startup, Senosis Health. Co-founded by Dr. Shwetak Patel from the University of Washington, Senosis Health has developed two smartphone applications to improve mobile health data collection and diagnosis. The SpiroSmart app uses a smartphone’s microphone to measure lung function and spirometry sensing. The HemaApp allows for non-invasive blood screening using the smartphone’s camera to analyze the light as it passes through the patient’s finger. The team’s aim was to increase the ease and accuracy of self-diagnosed pulmonary and hemoglobin function by patients at home.

On adapting smartphone cameras and microphones to serve as health diagnostic tools, Dr. Patel said, “those sensors that are already on the mobile phone can be repurposed in interesting new ways, where you can actually use those for diagnosing certain kinds of diseases.” Senosis Health’s acquisition brings further evidence of Google’s commitment to wearables as a health monitoring platform and as a way to empower users through technology. Sources: UNICOMP articles on SpiroSmart and HemaApp; John Cook at Geekwire.