Turning smartphones into personal, real-time pollution monitors.

A study reported in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, has shown how scientists have used smartphone and sensing technology to better pinpoint where and when pollution is at its worst. When local pollution levels go up, the associated health risks also increase, especially for children and seniors. But air pollution varies widely over the course of a day and by location, even within the same city. The researchers equipped more than 50 school children with smartphones that could track their location and physical activity. The children also received sensors that continuously measured the ambient levels of black carbon, a component of soot. Although most children spent less than 4 percent of their day traveling to and from school, commuting contributed to 13 percent of their total potential black carbon exposure. The researchers conclude that mobile technologies could contribute valuable new insights into air pollution exposure.

THE SMART PHONE AS A REVOLUTIONARY MEDICAL DEVICE.

Uber, Facebook, Alibaba and Airbnb all have something in common: none of these companies owns the asset that generates its unprecedented revenue (taxis, content, inventory and property rental).

This new business model is overhauling key industries throughout the economy.
 There are various platforms using the smart phone to deliver rapid and effective health care and veterinary services. 

An SMS,service in Nigeria delivers valuable information to subscribers about animal health and disease prevention.
The platform is planing an upgrade,where subscribers can interact in real-time.

 The service is enabled on any phone to cater for large number of farmers that dont have a smart phone,this is what the I-CONNECT-AGRICULTURE IS ALL ABOUT.

 A subscriber texts VET to 35818 from any network to signup.


There are a number of moonshots – large–scale government or enterprise–backed initiatives – promising to revolutionize the health sector, such as gene therapies, with powerful gene-editing technologies like CRISPR promising to transform medicine.

Costs associated with gene therapy have plummeted – where it once cost $100 million to decode one gene sequence, it now costs $1,000. There is a swarm of digital healthcare startups that is seeking to sort specific health challenges.

Moonshots rely on hundreds of billions of dollars of government grants or research endowments, but startups are able to disrupt their niches on very little money. And that's because someone else is paying to develop much of their technology – you, your friends and Kim Kardashian.

 The exploding online social interaction , a world where we reach for our smartphones a typical 155 times a day, where 52 billion messages are sent daily via WhatsApp, where you, Kim Kardashian and everyone else upload two billion pictures daily – puts enormous pressure on the smartphone industry to create and upgrade the technologies that accommodate this behavior.

 This includes super-high-resolution cameras, vast cellular bandwidth required to upload all our photos to the cloud, and the seemingly endless storage technology.

This very technology that allows us to keep up with the Kardashians also makes our smartphones unparalleled medical devices. A startup called Tissue Analytics lets you take pictures of a wound over time on your smartphone, allowing doctors to determine whether it's healing or festering.

   AliveCor lets you capture an electrocardiogram at home and alerts doctors if something is wrong with your heart. Netra Labs lets you take eye tests at home using mobile technology.

 China's internet giant Tencent recently acquired a major stake in Guahao, a startup that grew a massive user base as it enabled real-time geolocated physician appointments.

 This service was integrated into WeChat, as part of Tencent's vision of social digital healthcare. And there's a hardware and medical device arm – evident in the company's recent unveiling of its own glucometer.

 Because of all we are demanding from our smartphones and social networks, entrepreneurs with limited resources can now do what only governments could do ten years ago.

 All of these companies and hundreds more are leveraging today's Kardashianomics to make healthcare easier and effective while significantly reducing costs and freeing up our lives.

 Thanks to these digital wonders that define our engagement with today's technology and the startups that are harnessing it, our healthcare system is going to improve exponentially, and we as individuals are going to live longer… and better.

 Read more wired.co.uk

HOW TO USE APPS TO CUT RISK OF RABIES .

Researchers are using the app to track free-roaming dogs that have been vaccinated against rabies.
Rabies could be eradicated from street dogs in India with the help of a new smartphone app, a study has shown.

Monitoring them in this way has enabled vets to vaccinate 70 per cent of the dog population in the City of Ranchi -which is the threshold needed to minimize the risk that the disease is passed to people.  Adopting the approach more widely could help to eliminate rabies from people and animals

MICROSCOPE MADE FROM SMART PHONES.

Learn how smart phones are simplifying disease diagnosis;http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2015/05/microscope-made-smart-phone-diagnoses-deadly-african-parasite