British health officials are apparently working on a new app that allow users to urinate into their cell phones and find out in minutes if they have a sexually transmitted disease. What?
According to The Guardian, £4 million has already been invested in the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, which aims to create a smartphone app that allow users "to put urine or saliva on to a computer chip about the size of a USB chip, plug it into their phone or computer and receive a diagnosis within minutes." The app is designed for younger folks who are too ashamed to go to a clinic.
"Your mobile phone can be your mobile doctor. It diagnoses whether you've got one of a range of STIs, such as chlamydia or gonorrhea and tells you where to go next to get treatment," Dr Tariq Sadiq, a senior lecturer and consultant physician in sexual health and HIV at St George's, University of London, who is leading the project, told The Guardian.
They cannot afford tax breaks for the game industry though.
Source: Observer
Comments
Re: British Health Officials Prep STD Test App
Sorry, but this news is not really relevant to the games industry. The funding is going towards developing a device (a bit like a pregnancy testing kit) that could be used to diagnose an STI using software on a smartphone or computer, not an app that asks you to piss on your phone. Even if it were only used by GPs, it would still speed up the time taken to diagnose an STI.
Don't get me wrong, I fully support the drive for games industry tax breaks in the UK, but this is medical research and this article runs the risk of suggesting that it is less important than games development.