US develops mobile phones that can warn of disease

London, October 18 (Xinhua) American scientists have developed a new type of mobile phone that can be used to alert the epidemic of diseases such as influenza. The phones, it is said, send disease-characteristic information to doctors or institutions that monitor the disease's prevalence. According to the British New Scientist magazine website recently reported that this kind of early warning disease popular mobile phones by the United States http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13513.html "> MIT scientists Ammor Maden and other people to develop, The main method of work is to use a tracking recorder in mobile phones to record the movements of people and communication patterns of changes to detect influenza or fever cases, so as to put forward the disease epidemic warning.

Epidemiologists know that outbreaks of disease can change the way people act, but they are not able to track the pattern today. So Madden and his colleagues handed the phones they developed to 70 students in a college dormitory. The software in the phone will send anonymous data to Madden's research team about the students moving around, calling and sending and receiving text messages. The students are also required to fill out questionnaires on mental and physical health conditions every day.

The study team found the identification characteristics of the disease in data collected two months early last year. Students who fall sick from fever or flu tend to reduce their mobile frequencies, and the number of telephones in the late night and early morning is reduced. Madden and other people to adjust the mobile phone software settings, in the mobile phone data search for the identification features, since the software system so that they can in 90% of the case to identify influenza or fever patients, and early warning of the spread of disease.

According to the introduction, this technology can be used to detect the health status of the single person. Madden and others are developing a smartphone application. When the single person's communication and action patterns indicate illness, the software notifies a designated contact by mobile phone, perhaps his relative or physician.