Doctor in a smart phone?

It is possible you would soon be able to download your health status from an app on your smart phone.

A couple of Russian scientists, Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, have built a new ‘sensor’ that can detect cancer cells and diagnose diseases such as HIV, hepatitis and herpes. The sensor can diagnose a range of ailments from the privacy and comfort of the phone, at home, or anywhere.

"We are using a nano-mechanical circuit with a very high sensitivity," Fedyanin told RIR.

Earlier, such technology and simulated diagnostics worked only in very low temperatures, and in a vacuum. Fedyanin and Stebunov's invention however, is unique, because it is designed to function at normal room temperature and normal pressure.

Andrew Garazha, a researcher at Insilico Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, is convinced that it would be possible to place such a sensor inside a smart phone, and monitor changes in the cell structure within one's body, allowing early detection and diagnosis of some potentially deadly diseases.

"The clinical tests have yet to be done,'' Garazha said."I doubt the sensor will be widely used by doctors, but it can start a revolution at the pre-medical stage, when a patient doesn't yet know that he/she is ill, and will then need to get tests done."

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