Smartphone App And Accessory Lets You Check Your Cholesterol Levels

Our smartphones can perform many tasks these days, anywhere from tracking our running distance, speed, calories burnt, to detecting wind direction and more, so we guess it does not come as a complete surprise that our smartphones will also be able to check our cholesterol levels for us. This is achieved through an app and an additional smartphone accessory that the average person can use to check their cholesterol levels at home by themselves without having to make constant trips to the doctor which can get expensive, not to mention time consuming. Of course we expect that if anything is out of the ordinary, that’s when you should drop by the doctor’s, but for regular monitoring, this could do in a pinch.

Created by researchers from Cornell University, this accessory sports a reagent test strip in which you will need to draw a bit of your own blood to place on it. The reagent strip will then change different colors depending on your cholesterol levels. What makes this different from how it is normally done is that it takes advantage of your smartphone’s camera and flash to help illuminate and capture the color of the strip, thus doing away with the need for a health-care professional and specialized (read expensive) equipment.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Medical
Tags: Apps