Principal Investigator Richard Fletcher
We create new mobile devices and mobile apps to support health workers in the field, and enable new forms of portable clinical and laboratory testing. Although the immediate need is for global health in rural clinics around the world, there is certainly an emerging need in developed contries as well for consumer health. This work includes research in three main areas:
Low-cost Devices -- Design clever low-cost electronic and optical devices that interface to a mobile phone and can be used for diagnostic support or disease screening (e.g. anemia) in resource-poor settings.
Machine Learning -- The group develops advanced algorithms that go beyond simple data collection to provide diagnostic and valuable clinical decision support for the field doctor or health worker. This work includes advances signal processing, blind source separation algorithms, and probabilistic inference models that are also efficient and can run in real-time on a mobile phone or tablet.
User Interface Design -- Making diagnostic tools available to a wider community required completely rethinking the user interface design and using advanced techniques such as augmented reality and imaging technologies designed to simplify clinical use and transcend language barriers.