Smartphone App Uses Selfies to Check Your Cholesterol Level

A team of engineers has designed a smartphone accessory and app that allows users to monitor their own blood cholesterol levels. Think of it as a sort of cholesterol selfie — or maybe a healthie?

As researchers from Cornell University explain in a paper in the journal Lab on a Chip, all you need — aside from their attachment and a smartphone — is a reagent test strip and a willingness to draw your own blood. Cholesterol tests tend to rely on reagent strips that turn different colors, depending on the cholesterol levels of the blood placed on them. The researchers’ achievement was to design an attachment to be placed over the smartphone flash and camera that can illuminate and capture the color of the strip, rendering unnecessary specialized equipment or an in-person health professional. Read more...