The project was initiated by a scientist Mathematics from the University of Oxford, England, named Max Little. He developed an algorithm to detect abnormal sounds that can help detect Parkinson.
Parkinson's is a degenerative neurological disease that primarily affects people over the age of 50 years. The disease is named according to the name of the inventor in 1817, namely Dr. James Parkinson. People with Parkinson's difficult to move due to muscle stiffness. Some of them even had dementia.
Symptoms of this disease are sometimes difficult to identify due to growing together and slowly. Most people, for example, began to feel shaky in some parts of the body when they are exhausted.
Max Little and his team have tested the applications made by them, as well as to detect the sound of people who suffer from Parkinson's. The level of accuracy is obtained, according to Little, was as high as 86 percent. Currently, they are analyzed 10,000 samples collected voice over the telephone network.
Elsewhere, a variety of mobile applications is also developed to detect the disease. The Wall Street Journal reported, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are testing 4 applications to analyze hundreds of pictures of moles and dark spots, which have previously been examined by a dermatologist.
The best application is able to detect skin diseases, including skin cancer, with an accuracy rate up to 98 percent. While most applications have only earned 6.8 percent accuracy rate. Unfortunately, the research conducted by these researchers did not mention the names of the applications they are testing.
Previously, there are mobile apps are being created to detect the disease in the lungs. Application called SpiroSmart developed by researchers at the University of Washington. SpiroSmart works by analyzing the sound of breathing users.
In addition to developing specific applications, researchers and scientists also utilize existing applications to detect disease. One of them is Twitter. Social media is used by researchers and computer scientists from Johns Hopkins University for the detection of influenza cases in the United States. They collect the chirp-chirp of flu neighbors Twitter users to map the location of the contracted flu epidemic.
In Indonesia, a mobile application for detecting the actual disease has also been developed. For example, MOSES, an acronym for "System and Endemic Obervation Malarian Surveliance". The app was created by a team of students of the Institute of Technology Bandung to diagnose malaria. The application was elected as the first winner in the category of Mobile Device Award, the Imagine Cup 2009 competition held by Microsoft Corp..
In essence, future trends point to the mobile world. A variety of health applications being developed aims to help people detect the disease and care for the environment.
Before it can be used by many people, of course there needs to be a serious and comprehensive research on the application and related diseases. But keep in mind, no matter how great an application to detect the disease, the application was not developed to replace the role of a doctor.
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