'Blood lab' inside a mobile phone could detect cancer

Worawut Srisukkham, a PhD student at Northumbria University, Newcastle, is in the early stages of an 'e-health technology' project aimed at developing a mobile phone app that can examine blood sample images and diagnose cancer.

It would work by taking a magnified image of a blood slide via a microscopic lens attached to the smart phone, which the app would then be able to screen for evidence of leukemia -- a blood cancer.

Once created, Worawut's smart phone app could be used for initial diagnosis of people living in remote rural areas in developing countries, enabling rural doctors to analyse blood samples and refer patients to the city hospitals for treatment or further investigation.

Worawut said: "Creating a phone app that can perform this screening role would be a low cost and efficient solution to detect leukemia in remote and resource-poor regions."

In 2012, approximately 352,000 children and adults around the world developed some form of leukemia with a similar number dying from the cancer.

Once his project is complete, Worawut hopes it will help to prevent unnecessary deaths from the disease caused by delayed diagnosis and treatment due to poverty or living in remote areas far away from large hospitals and laboratories.

"Our aim is to use the high-performance and technology of smart phones to help in health care," Worawut added. "Doctors working in remote areas could use the technology to screen patients in their community and refer those with an abnormal result to the larger medical facilities."

*Worawut will present his idea at Maker Faire UK at Newcastle's Centre for Life on 26 and 27 April.