Phone app 'able to detect pneumonia'

An Australian team says it has developed a mobile phone application that reproduces the skills of a trained medical doctor when it comes to detecting pneumonia, Nina Tietzel reports.

Sydney is hosting the opening ceremony of the world finals of a technology competition with a difference.

Microsoft's Imagine Cup is asking students from across the world to help make the world a better place using innovative technology.

Australia is pinning her hopes on a team from the University of Melbourne that aims to address one the world's most serious child health problems: pneumonia.

The team has built the StethoCloud, an ingenious mobile application that reproduces the diagnostic capability of a trained medical doctor. The smartphone app is able to detect, alert, and advise those with little or no awareness of pneumatic or respiratory illness, giving it the potential to save millions of lives a year.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children worldwide, killing around 1.4 million children under five each year. This figure surpasses that of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, the WHO reports.

But the StethoCloud is just one of many medical innovations presented at the Cup.

Finalists in Africa have created an app that helps midwives diagnose expectant mothers, while a Kuwaiti group has built an application that converts sign language into human voice.

Roughly 65 per cent of all projects in the competition addressed health topics, such as diagnosis of diseases, via mobile applications and proactive accessibility of medical information.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup worldwide finals run till July 10 in Sydney.