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Scientists have developed a way to test for tuberculosis with a smartphone camera.
The real-time app-based test for the infectious lung disease provides 98.4% accuracy in detecting tuberculosis antigen-specific antibodies, which could help reduce the death rate of more than a million people a year, especially in areas where there are few health experts available.
“This new system has been developed with colleagues in Malaysia which, in common with many areas of south-east Asia, has a high rate of tuberculosis and extensive, remote rural areas with few medical facilities for testing,” said Professor Alamgir Hossain, from Anglia Ruskin University.
“This system wouldn’t be used instead of seeing a physician but would be a first port of call.
“If the app detects tuberculosis it would instruct the user to contact a medical professional.
“One major advantage of our app system is that it doesn’t require internet access or any additional hardware to be added to a smartphone.”
The research has been supported by a £129,000 grant, jointly funded by the Newton Fund and Newton-Ungku Omar Fund.
It is hoped the app will be widely available within the next two years.
“Our system is a portable, cheap and accurate automatic TB diagnosis tool which can benefit millions of people, especially in remote locations where few health experts are available,” Prof Hossain added.
“The technique we have developed for this test, using a mobile phone camera, can be applied to other colourimetric qualitative tests, so it has a number of other possible uses.”
