Researchers from the University of Washington debut a new way to screen for various blood conditions

Orange County, CA - October 13th 2016 -  Hemoglobin is a protein molecule responsible for carrying oxygen from the lungs to organs and bodily tissues and returning CO2 to be expelled through the lungs.  Insufficient amounts of hemoglobin result in stunted distribution of oxygen, which can cause a number of conditions previously measured by painful blood draws or expensive pulse oximeters.

Thanks to researchers from the University of Washington, a new application that allows fast, accurate, hemoglobin readings could eliminate the need for invasive blood draws. HemaApp works in tandem with a smartphone’s (Nexus 5 in this case) native camera and various other light sources to detect the color intensity of the blood flowing through one’s finger. The process is simple, a patient places their finger over the camera lens and then, using wavelengths of light and infrared energy passing through the appendage, a series of videos are created. Color absorption and reflection of colors is then analyzed by a machine learning algorithm which distinguishes concentrations of hemoglobin and other blood components.

In the initial stages of testing the app, the team evaluated the phone in 3 separate instances. The first was solely using the phone’s native camera.  Next, the phone camera was used in the presence of an incandescent bulb. Lastly, the phone camera was equipped with an accessory light and then tested. While the study size only amounted to 31 patients, results indicated that the light accessory was more accurate (82%) than Masimo’s Pronto-7(81%), the current and expensive FDA approved way of non-invasively measuring hemoglobin. The app using only the smartphone’s native camera scored an impressive 69% and in the presence of an incandescent bulb there was 74% accuracy.