Your smartphone might have just gotten a little smarter! Researchers at Cornell University in New York are currently developing an app and accessory called SmartCARD, short for Smartphone Cholesterol Application for Rapid Diagnostics, that can measure your cholesterol.
David Erickson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell, said that smartphones were a natural fit for a cholesterol tracking device. "Everyone already carries a smartphone, and that gives you an incredible amount of hardware and computational power in your pocket all the time," he told ABC News. "It's silly not to take advantage of it."
The SmartCARD system clamps over the smartphone's camera. Just like a standard detector, the person pricks his or her finger and dabs a drop of blood onto a test strip. The strip is fed into a holding slot on the system, and the smartphone snaps a photo of the blood sample for analysis.
The SnartCARD tracks cholesterol over time."
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A current problem with the accessory is that it only reads total cholesterol, it does not distinguish between HDL and LDL, the good and bad cholesterol. "If I have a cholesterol level of 200, it could be 180 good and 20 bad, or 180 bad and 20 good," said Mohan. "It's important to measure the levels of each type of cholesterol. I guess the smartphone just needs to still get lust a little bit smarter!"
Erickson's research is published in the most recent issue of the journal Lab on a Chip.
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