With the advances that are being made in science and technology, its no big surprise when we see medical gadgets being introduced that cost less and are on par with the expensive versions of the same. We have repeatedly stated that the field that is benefiting the most from the advances in science and technology is the medical science. Today we are going to cover a latest gadget that is capable of connecting to your smartphone, it comes as a cheaper alternative to the traditional lung monitoring devices and is known as SandPiper.
It has been designed to work as an economical and simplified version of a spirometer. For those of you who are not aware, spirometer is a machine that is used to keep track of airflow through lungs. The SandPiper is plugged into the headphone jack of your smartphone (iOs/Android) and user is supposed to blow into one end of the device, a sensor in the device will generate electricity that is proportional to the air velocity it experiences and also calculates the volume of air that is travelling through the tube. This information is then provided to the companion App. SandPiper is then capable of gauging parameters pertaining to airflow; lung capacity, speed at which lungs are exhaling and inhaling, air exhaled per second and any limitations in airflow.
If you used conventional machines for gathering all this info, it will cost you quite a lot (some few thousand dollars perhaps) whereas SandPiper does it all in a fraction of cost. The company behind SandPiper is South jersey Engineering Research (SERJ) and it is currently busy raising funds for this gadget on Indiegogo to move to production phase. You can order one for yourself at a pledge of $55 with shipments due December 2014 if all goes accordingly.
