College Students Design $20 Digital Stethoscope That Can Diagnose Pneumonia

This from Good.is......

"Every year 2.1 million children around the globe die from pneumonia...making it the number one killer of kids under the age of 5... In the developing world, the infection is either not diagnosed or diagnosed too late for antibiotics to help...Those diagnosis challenges could disappear thanks to the StethoCloud, a custom built stethoscope and mobile phone app system that analyzes a person's breathing to determine if they have pneumonia."

"The StethoCloud is the creation of four students from the University of Melbourne—Hon Weng Chong, Kim Ramchen, Mahsa Salehi, and Andrew Lin—for Microsoft's student innovation competition, the Imagine Cup."

"The mic captures the sounds of the person breathing and the app uploads the recording onto cloud servers. Then the app analyzes the breathing patterns, makes a diagnosis according to the standards of the World Health Organization—either the subject has pneumonia or doesn't—and then presents the user with the appropriate treatment plan."

Thanks to Liz Dwyer for reporting on this.