Nearly 2 billion people worldwide suffer from anemia. Because their organs don’t receive enough oxygen, anemia patients often experience dizziness, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, cold hands and feet, and other issues. Chronic anemia can even lead to serious health problems such as heart attacks and organ damage. However, anemia symptoms are usually not easy to confirm, so determining whether you have anemia requires various evaluations at a clinic—making it a rather troublesome condition to test for. But recently, experts at Chapman University in the United States developed an AI-powered app that can quickly and accurately check for signs of anemia just by taking a photo of your fingernails. If you’re interested, keep reading!
American researchers develop an app that detects anemia by photographing fingernails with a smartphone.
Anemia is a condition that many people have to some extent. Chronic anemia, iron-deficiency anemia, thalassemia, and similar conditions can lead to heart attacks or organ damage if not managed carefully. However, at present, to check whether you actually have anemia, you need to go to a clinic for tests such as CBC blood tests, hemoglobin and hematocrit analysis, which is relatively inconvenient.
However, recently experts at Chapman University in the US have developed an AI-driven app that can determine whether someone has anemia from a photo of their fingernail, offering test-takers a non-invasive and convenient detection method.
According to Chapman University, this AI app has already helped over 200,000 users in the U.S. screen themselves for anemia. The research team says the AI app achieves accuracy and performance matching gold-standard laboratory tests, with sensitivity and specificity of 89% and 93% respectively. Beyond screening, the AI app also provides an AI-driven personalized system for people already diagnosed with anemia, and after personalization, the detection error rate is further reduced. This way, patients can use a mobile app to regularly monitor their hemoglobin levels in real time, without needing to go to a clinic for expensive blood tests.
Although Chapman University stated that the AI app can help users detect whether they have symptoms of anemia, they also mentioned that the app cannot replace proper medical testing and can only serve as a warning system. It lets users know whether they should go to the hospital for further consultation with a doctor.
The AI app for detecting anemia symptoms was originally intended to let everyone use it for initial screening, thereby helping to improve public health efforts. If you are interested in this AI app, you canGo to the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Learn more:
Source: KOCPC Chinese