California Healthline: Applying Silicon Valley Smarts To Age-Old Diseases
“…The gadgets [used to detect infection with Loa loa worms], called LoaScopes, are part of a broader effort to harness technology and innovation in the U.S., including California’s Silicon Valley, to fight age-old diseases in the developing world. Over the years, major California universities — UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, UCLA — have built cellphone microscopes geared to look at other bloodborne diseases in Africa and Asia, such as malaria and tuberculosis. UC-San Francisco researchers are using satellite images on Google Earth Engine to construct real-time maps of breeding conditions for malaria that can help predict infection rates in rural villages…” (Rinker, 4/11).