Cell phone technology has changed the economic landscape in many parts of the world. Now it might shape health care as well. Photo: Lisa Hoashi/Mercy Corps

Diagnosing diseases, running blood work and monitoring brain activity -- yup, there will be an app for that. And unlike Angry Birds, it might save lives.

One such project uses a polarized laser in a phone’s camera to find traces of malaria in the blood. Another stops the parasite before it even reaches the host: the program uses sound waves at resonant frequencies that cause nearby mosquitoes to vibrate uncontrollably and temporarily lose the ability to fly.

These projects prove that phones that simply send and receive calls are a thing of the past, and no one understands this better than Bill Gates. Under Gates’ program Grand Challenges in Global Health, applications that improve health are on the fast track from concept to reality. While these apps could be used anywhere, they would focus primarily on areas where medical tools or trained personnel are unavailable. Most of the programs are years away from completion, Fast Company Magazine reports, but the health benefits and cost savings they would bring could be worth the wait.

Another project funded by Grand Challenges would create an inexpensive near-infrared camera attachment that could monitor the brain activity of infants who have experienced a head injury. This application would then alert users of any dangerous brain swelling. Also in development is an app that would allow smartphones to scan medical documents into central databases.

But the Gates Foundation is not the only organization supporting smartphone developments for the global good. The X Prize Foundation has created a prize incentive for the development of a 2G phone-network-based education system. This would allow anyone with access to a cell phone to listen to educational lessons and lectures and interact through text messages.

These applications are still a ways off. Even if they are completed, they may never be an appropriate technology for the developing world. Physical location, parts availability, infrastructure, and even culture can stop a new technology from being adopted. Currently, smartphones are inaccessible to many parts of the world, particularly those targeted by the X Prize and Gates Foundation. But only a few years ago, the same could be said about mobile phones. Now, an estimated 4.6 billion subscriptions exist worldwide.

While it might be hard to imagine smartphones functioning in places where most housing is still made from mud, even these challenges are being addressed; Gates is funding a project that uses the metabolic outputs of microorganisms in soil to charge cell phones. Welcome to the future.

Plasmodium falciparum (malaria) parasite taking over red blood cells. Photo: Eric Fortin (Flickr)

A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley are pushing the limits of cell phone technology with the development of their newly minted Cellscope.

The device is a six-inch microscope that attaches to a cell phone’s digital camera lens to take high resolution microscopic images of blood and sputum samples. The Cellscope's compact size and durability makes it ideal for use in the field, nearly eliminating the health worker's need for expensive tabletop microscopes.

The Cellscope team, led by Principal Investigator Dan Fletcher, has been able to reliably identify pathogens from two of the most prominent diseases in the underdeveloped world — malaria and tuberculosis. Combined, the World Health Organization estimates that the two diseases kill 2.7 million people each year, although both are treatable if caught early. (The vast majority of malaria and tuberculosis cases are found in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia respectively.) The Cellscope offers healthcare workers in remote areas a valuable diagnostic tool, aiding in reliable early detection of these two diseases.

Right now the Cellscope is still being tested in the field. But the UC Berkeley team hopes that in time, data captured by the Cellscope will be uploaded to a central database, allowing medical workers to track the spread of diseases more efficiently than ever before.

A new fundraising source for poverty reduction? Photo: freedryk (flickr)

How do you make up a yawning gap in funding for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria? By asking airline passengers to pay an extra two bucks when they book their ticket. Time reports that UNITAID, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to combating those diseases, believes new funding approaches are needed as traditional aid funding can't keep up with the demand.

Thanks to a partnership with ticket reservation services, UNITAID will ask nearly everyone who buys an airplane ticket in the U.S. to donate two dollars to fight the diseases. UNITAID will then pass on the money to UNICEF, the Clinton Foundation and other organizations which will use the money to address the spread of disease, as well as to improve women's health and reduce child mortality.

Of course the program isn't likely to raise all the money needed to prevent the spread of disease, but McKinsey & Co estimates it could eventually raise $1 billion a year.

Point-of-sale donations are gaining momentum, with companies like Safeway and Hollywood video asking customers to donate the few cents necessary to round up to the next dollar or to donate a dollar. It isn't surprising that technology leaders like Expedia and Travelocity are the latest adopters.

Photo: woodleywonderworks (flickr)

Sure, your cell phone can take pictures and send text messages, but can it detect malaria?

UCLA scientists have found a way to bring medical diagnostic tests to resource-poor areas by transforming cell phones into cheap, portable gadgets that can monitor and detect diseases like malaria and HIV.

As Wired explains:

UCLA researcher Dr. Aydogan Ozcan images thousands of blood cells instantly by placing them on an off-the-shelf camera sensor and lighting them with a filtered-light source (coherent light, for you science buffs). The filtered light exposes distinctive qualities of the cells, which are then interpreted by Ozcan's custom software. By analyzing the cell types present in a much larger sample, a more accurate diagnosis can be made in a matter of minutes.

Currently, the software to analyze these images runs on a desktop computer, but Ozcan’s team is working to create software that runs on the cell phone device itself.

This technology is still in developmental stages, and skeptics are already lighting up online discussion boards. But the promise of quick, accurate and low-cost blood testing in the world's most remote areas is definitely exciting. And if this idea does become a widespread reality, here’s hoping that effective treatment for those diagnosed follows quickly on its heels.

Malaria nets. Photo: Tomas de la Maza (flickr)

Is malaria's reign of terror coming to an end?

Every year, 500 million people fall seriously ill with malaria — a disease that induces fever, chills, nausea, flu-like illness and, without treatment, coma and death. More than 1 million people die each year from malaria — almost all in the developing world. The near-universal poverty of its victims is one reason it has not received the attention, and therefore the money, necessary to secure its demise.

Even in the face of these scary statistics, malaria may be about to meet it's match. The Economist reports a renewed sense of interest in its eradication, mainly because it jeopardizes the UN's Millennium Development Goals, a set of benchmarks in health, education and human welfare that world leaders committed to attain by 2015.

There's a cost-benefit rationale, too. Malaria costs Africa upwards of $12 billion a year in health expenses and lost productivity. Yet a five-year eradication plan might cost as little as $2.2 billion a year, according to a report by Malaria No More and McKinsey & Company.

With these numbers in mind, last week the UN unveiled a new campaign to fight malaria at its most critical spots. The Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership — created to "enable sustained delivery and use of the most effective prevention and treatment for those affected most by malaria — staged the first World Malaria Day last week. It coincided with a UN plan to spray inside houses and distribute insecticide-treated bed nets to "all people at risk" of the disease by the end of 2010.

Any effort to stamp out malaria must deal with an added layer of complexity. When diminished but not destroyed, malaria can come back with a vengeance. Any letup in the eradication campaign may end up actually increasing the numbers of those at risk.

But considering how much malaria undermines the war on poverty, a risk taken to ensure its eradication may be a risk worth taking.