Gee Whiz! Cellphone Gadget Could Measure Male Sperm Count

© AP Photo / Daniel A. FletcherPrick a finger and have the blood checked for parasites by smartphone? Scientists are turning those ubiquitous phones into microscopes and other medical tools that could help fight diseases in remote parts of the world
Prick a finger and have the blood checked for parasites  by smartphone? Scientists are turning those ubiquitous phones into microscopes and other medical tools that could help fight diseases in remote parts of the world - Sputnik International
Subscribe
A new attachment will allow smartphone users to examine their own reproductive potency in the comfort of their own homes.

iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus go on sale - Sputnik International
Suspected Mass Hack of Cell Phone Data in Washington DC
Smartphones — cool little devices that can be used for a thousand things, right? Better make that one thousand and one.

The sperm counter uses a tool common to many smartphone applications — a camera. The phone camera is crucial for the new attachment to work.

In fact, the attachment is basically a lens that turns your camera into a microscope. Once you load a certain amount of sperm onto a disposable chip, you simply insert the chip into the attachment and start the app, which will do the analysis and count for you.

No, you will not need to clean your phone later.

Low sperm count is one of the indicators of male infertility. Currently, detecting male infertility requires equipment worth about $100,000 and a trained technician.

According to Hadi Shafiee, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, the team of researchers aimed to develop a cheap disposable test that would be as commonplace and easy to use as pregnancy test are today.

"We wanted to see what happens when this is operated by an untrained user with no scientific background," Shafiee told reporters.

While his team is reportedly not the first to develop a male fertility test, they are the first to create a tool to measure additional parameters, such as sperm concentration and motility.

Compared to lab equipment, the device in conjunction with the app allowed for 98 percent successful infertility identification. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday.

The device, which currently costs about $5 to make, is designed for use with Android phones, but the team looks forward to making an iPhone-compatible one, too.

After getting approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, Shafiee will seek to establish production and sales of the device, which is expected to cost about $50 in retail.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала