University of California, Santa Barbara scientists are in the early stages of attempting to develop the technology that would make it possible to conduct a COVID test on your personal smartphone.
From Cnet.com: The method is pretty simple: Download the free app developed by scientists, Bacticount, and perch your phone over the hot plate with the rear camera facing down. You'll place your saliva into a test kit that's on the hot plate, drop in a reactive solution that will make viral RNA more noticeable to your phone's camera, and run the app. The solution will bond with the viral material (both COVID and the flu were tested in the study) and turn bright red, and the app will estimate the amount of viral load in the saliva based on how quickly the color reaction happened.
There is one hiccup that stands out: the app has, thus far, only been calibrated to work on Samsung Galaxy phones. This doesn’t make much sense to me. Is Samsung secretly funding this project? Why would these scientists not target Apple products?
Regardless, the potential for this testing option to come into play at some point is exciting. The ease of being able to test yourself right from your phone instead of having to book an appointment or score a test at your local store is very appealing.
More on this to come if this project ever makes headway..
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