Any parent who’s had to deal with a screaming child with a painful ear infection knows that getting a quick diagnosis and medication if needed is the key to regaining a happy home. What if they were able to skip taking the upset child to the doctor for that diagnosis?
That is the question posed by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, both in Atlanta, who have created a new pediatric medical device called a Remotoscope, a clip-on attachment and software app that turns an iPhone into an otoscope.
With the Remotoscope, parents could take a picture or video of their child’s eardrum using their iPhone and send the images digitally to a physician for diagnostic review.
The Remotoscope's clip-on attachment uses the phone's camera and flash for the light source as well as a custom software app to provide magnification and record data to the phone. The iPhone’s data transmission capabilities seamlessly send images and video to a doctor's inbox or to the patient's electronic medical record.
The device could even save money for both families and healthcare systems. Pediatricians tend to err on the side of caution and prescribe antibiotics, which could cause a built-up antibiotic resistance. Remotoscope may be able to change physicians’ prescription patterns of antibiotics for ear infections. Receiving serial images of a child’s ear over several days via the Remotoscope could allow physicians to wait and see if a child’s infection improves or whether antibiotics are warranted.
