Una de las herramientas básicas en todo laboratorio es un microscopio. Este dispositivo juega un papel importante en el diagnóstico de algunas enfermedades como la anemia, la tuberculosis y la malaria. Desafortunadamente son equipos bastante complejos y costosos, y en muchos países del tercer mundo (con presupuestos bastante limitados) tener available microscope becomes a luxury not always available, much less if you're in a place away from a health center / hospital. But that may change in the near future thanks to Dr. Avdogan Ozcan, assistant professor of Electrical Engineering and a member of Nano Systems Institute at the University of California (UCLA), which has created a device that converts a cell phone camera to a microscope. The process devised by Dr. Ozcan is to use LED (light emitting diodes) to illuminate a biological sample, cells present in the sample interfere with light waves and reflect, the cell phone camera can receive interference pattern and creates a graph called "hologram." The received image is sent wirelessly to a hospital to process the images can be created mathematically identical to those that would be under a microscope. The hardware (electronic components) required is simple and does not cost much more than $ 10.
However, the really important part of this development is that, in the longer term, with the right software installed, the same phones can automatically detect abnormalities in cells and therefore diagnose diseases.
This means that in countries third world where the availability of qualified medical personnel is limited and the population's access to basic health care is also quite limited with this device, any person (without medical training) can go to remote areas, diagnose and help prevention, detection and control of diseases and epidemics positively increasing health coverage with a very small investment. REFERENCES
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/business/08novel.html?_r=2
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