Invention turns cell phone into mobile medical lab
When Debbie Gordon and her fellow health-care mission workers go to Belize, there's just so much they can do to treat people in the remote village of Gales Point. Her group, which includes two or three doctors, can only treat the town's 300 villagers based on the symptoms patients describe or what the doctors observe.
"If we had the ability to take a device that could do field tests and get back the results in a few days, that would be very helpful," said Gordon, a health educator based in North Carolina, who teaches doctors and nurses about care for sick newborns.
How about in a few seconds? Such a device may be available in the near future, and it could turn a cell phone into a mobile medical lab -- and change the way doctors treat patients in rural areas far from hospitals.
