Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Jie Chen shows off a working model of a medical sensor that will conduct a suite of medical tests from your own home. Chen is speaking during Engineering Expo running 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 26, at the Engineering Teaching and Learning Complex.
(Edmonton) Imagine the time, money, and lives that could be saved if we could use hand-held technology that would quickly analyse our health and alert us to illnesses and disease. With the rise of sensors and new electronic devices to measure personal health, more advanced home health technology is on the horizon.
You can learn more about what's going on at the leading edge of research into this technology at Engineering Expo Sept. 26.
Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Jie Chen is delivering a free talk on the subject. Entitled Turning your smart phone into a tri-corder, the talk will focus on Chen's research. He is developing a device that will be on par with the tri-corder device made popular in Star Trek.
Chen is developing a non-invasive hand-held biosensor with a touch-screen that can be used by patients or physicians at home, on the go, or in the clinic to, in a matter of minutes, diagnose, monitor, and predict various health conditions including 50 plus common diseases that afflict more than 30 per cent of Canadians and costs the health care system more than $77 billion per year to treat, monitor, and prevent.
By measuring metabolite concentrations in biofluids, such as blood or urine, Che says his device can summarize a person's current general health and predict future health changes. The analytical capabilities of metabolite concentrations come from the fact that they are exquisitely sensitive to and change with one's health thereby allowing them to, with high precision and specificity, predict the development or detect the presence of: maternal diseases, childhood diseases, chronic diseases, infectious diseases, neurological disorders, and many more, all for just approximately $25 per test.
Visit the Engineering Expo website to learn more about this free family event! The public is welcome to attend Expo, running Sept. 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the ETLC building on the UAlberta campus.