Nokia’s disease-detecting Handset!
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
photo credit: masochismtango
You can count upon Nokia to do the unthinkable and they have just delivered up to their reputation. This isn’t just speculation but a fact — tests are already underway to create a handset that is capable of detecting human diseases and is smart enough to send a precautionary alert to its users and even listed physicians from its own memory. Before this innovation, the closest that we had come to getting a gadget that was remotely capable of detecting something within the human body by just being held near the mouth was the breath analyser in its various incarnations. Previous to that, we had some odour detectors but they weren’t too successful. However, none of them come even close to what Nokia is planning to do — incorporate a chip in its N95 handset to offer capabilities like checking upon the phone’s user for any metabolic function that can be deemed as out of the ordinary.
This handset is being developed by A.N.D. (Applied Nanodetectors) that this is the term being used to describe it, the ‘AND’ phone. In a way, it has similarities to the breath analyser wherein it too would be using a person’s breath to analyse his bodily condition. However, it is the level of analysis that has taken a quantum leap in the AND phone. Actually, the phone contains a number of very perceptive sensors that can create a whole lot of interpretations just from your breath’s composition. The handset can immediately recognise the various types of gases in a person’s breath, including Nitric Oxide and Ammonia to tabulate the density of each of these gases. Then this data is compared with figures of similar gas densities of an average healthy individual that are pre-loaded. This phone would be good enough to sense out something as grave as cancer.
They say animals, particularly some cats have the ability to sense if there is something wrong with a person. One such example exists at a Rhode Island rehabilitation facility where Oscar (now a famous feline) can sense if a patient is about to pass away and starts crouching near the unlucky one. Not through our own sensibilities, but may be with this Nokia invention, we would be able to match Oscar’s abilities.
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Tags: disease detecting handset, nokia
