Mobile Epilepsy Diagnosing with Smartphones

As if phones aren't already smart enough a team of researchers are using them to help diagnose epilepsy in poor countries where the disorder is often poorly understood and treatments are scarce. In these places epilepsy untreated can be deadly. The portable brain scanner developed by Jacob Eg Larsen and Arkadiusz Stopczynski at the Technical University of Denmark only needs a smart phone and an electrode skullcap. They are doing clinical trials in Boston and Copenhagen now to calibrate the scanners. These will be especially beneficial for school aged children that may be having petit mal seizures that are more like staring spells. These kids often appear to be inattentive when they are actually having a seizure and thus their epilepsy goes undiagnosed and untreated. I can relate to this because in my years of teaching in this country, this is a condition sometimes in our youngsters goes undiagnosed. I could write right here- What will they think of next? Because I am sure someone is already thinking and developing other innovative uses for smartphone technology that will benefit us in our ever changing world.