VOA常速英语:Smartphone Apps Help You Monitor Your Health

Computer scientist Shwetak Patel and his team are developing new sensing systems. “The initial focus was really around energy and water monitoring.”They built a new generation of smart sensors that monitor electronic interference on a home’s power line or water pressure changes in the plumbing. Most of this technology has already found industrial applications. And Patel and his team turned their attention to adapting the technology for personal health monitoring.
计算机科学家什韦塔克·帕特尔和他的团队正在开发新的传感系统。最初关注的焦点是能源和水资源监控。他们制造了新一代的智能传感器，用于监测家庭输电线上的电子干扰或管道内的水压变化。大部分的技术已经出现了工业应用。于是帕特尔和他的团队将注意力转向了对个人健康监测技术的调整。

“So how do we take this noise and make it into a signal of interest? That was a kind of the core of what we did for many years. And we’re taking that work and applying it to other domains.” They’re looking to take advantage of all the functionality built into our smart phones. With the users permission, this App can use the microphone, built into most smart phones, to listen to background noises,such as coughing, searching for patterns that suggest a trip to the doctor might be an order. “We construct these models that try and understand how sound works, how it what its patterns are?And we give it a whole bunch of examples of different kinds of audio, things like people talking,things like people laughing, sneezing and of course coughing.”This App uses a phone’s camera to check haemoglobin levels in blood by analyzing the color of capillary fluids through the skin.
那么，我们如何将这种噪音变成一种感兴趣的信号呢？这是我们多年来所做的工作的核心，我们正在把这项工作应用到其他领域。”他们希望利用我们智能手机内置的所有功能，在得到用户允许的情况下，这个应用程序就可以使用内置在大多数智能手机中的麦克风，来倾听背景噪音，比如咳嗽，建议去看医生的模式可能是一个命令。我们构建这些模型，试图了解声音是如何工作的，它的模式是怎样的？我们给它提供了很多不同类型的音频的例子，比如人们说话、大笑、打喷嚏，当然还有咳嗽。这个应用程序通过手机的摄像头来分析毛细血管的颜色从而检查血液中的血红蛋水平。

“Generally what happens is if you’re anemic your bloods are going to be a little less red,and we take advantage of that by putting your finger over a camera of a phone,the camera of the phone can actually see the coloration of the blood.”And this test uses the camera tell parents worried about jaundice in newborn infants.“Now jaundice is something that doctors who have seen tons of babies, it just can figure out on a very basic level of; is this baby, do they need get treatment or are they in a good condition? Where as a first-time parent has no idea necessarily what jaundice might look like.”
通常情况下，如果你贫血，你血液的颜色就会浅一点，我们就是利用这一点，把你的手指放在手机的摄像头上，手机的摄像头就可以看到血液的颜色。这个测试就是使用这种摄像头观测父母普遍担心的新生儿黄疸问题。现在黄疸的诊断在某种程度上就需要一位诊断过多名婴儿的医生，他们可以从一个非常基本的水平上看出，这个婴儿是否患有黄疸，他们是否需要接受治疗，或者他们身体状况良好。可第一次为人父母的家长不知道黄疸会是什么样子。

The researchers say the built-in sensors found in smart phones are already commonplace but their applications and their implications for our health and well-being maybe more far-reaching than we ever imagined.
研究人员表示，智能手机内置的传感器已经司空见惯，但它们的应用及其对我们健康和幸福的影响可能比我们想象的更为深远。

I’m Faith Lapidus VOA News.
VOA记者费思播报。