Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’

U.S. filmmaker Dan Woolley was in Haiti shooting a documentary about poverty when the recent, devastating earthquake struck and buried him under rubble. He suffered a fracture in his leg and a cut on his head. Luckily, he had downloaded a first-aid application onto his iPhone which may have saved his life. By following instructions on his phone he was able to fashion a tourniquet for his leg and stop his head from bleeding. The application also warned him to not fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes in order to keep him awake. Sixty-five hours later, he was finally rescued and reunited with his family. [MSNBC via Wired]

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A new Johns Hopkins University study is validating the potential of smart phones in medical care. Since the debut of the iPhone, one of the most-often demonstrated medical uses of the device are radiological applications which allow physicians to view x-rays, CT scans and MRIs wirelessly. However, are these images comparable to the high-end workstations found in the radiologist’s office? Are pictures displayed on such a small screen sufficient for physicians to make accurate diagnoses? According to this current study, it appears radiologists were able to just as accurately diagnose an appendicitis on an iPhone 3G as on their office computers, with one major difference – portability. Fifteen of the 25 study patients were correctly identified as having acute appendicitis on 74 of 75 interpretations. Being able to accurately diagnose a medical emergency, such as an appendicitis, without having to be tied to a workstation may save valuable time, especially in areas where radiologists may not be available immediately. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time until someone writes a program which will allow computers to automatically detect an appendicitis without the radiologist. [via Medical News Today]

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Hearing is one of the most often overlooked aspects of a physical exam. Physicians rarely ask patients about their hearing, and most people never think about getting their hearing checked (at least half of all Americans have not had a hearing exam within the past five years). Enter uHear (TM), a hearing test application for the Apple iPhone. The authors claim that the program can identify potential hearing loss, especially among the predominantly young population that uses the device. This is the group most at risk for hearing loss with 84 percent saying they’ve turned up their MP3 players loud enough to block out noise in everyday situations such as at home, on the street, or while on transportation. This is enough to cause long term hearing loss. Currently, it is believed that there are at least 30 million Americans with hearing loss and a great many of them are under the age of 35. Read more.

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