Noninvasive Total Cholesterol Tested By Digital Camera — #HITsm Chat Discovery

For those familiar with the EMR and HIPAA and EMR and EHR blogs in the HealthCare Scene network, you might have seen some posts recently highlighting the weekly HL7 Standards weekly #HITsm Chats. Four questions are posed, and there is always some great discussion. If not, here are some of the recent round-ups.

August 4th, 2012 #HITsm Twitter Chat

August 18th, 2012 #HITsm Twitter Chat

This weeks chat had some interesting topics that really pertain to social media, smart phones, and health. I learned about some cool products and that have recently been developed, so I thought I’d share with Smart Phone Health Care’s readers. (to read the full transcript, click here). Over the next few days, I’m going to highlight a few of the most interesting tweets that I found during last week’s chat.

Here is the article about the nifty noninvasive total cholesterol test using a digital camera bit.ly/O0WP2N#HITsm

— Melody Smith Jones (@MelSmithJones) August 24, 2012

Now this was interesting. I don’t know about you, but I hate getting my blood drawn. Not only do I have the smallest veins ever (I’ve been told by phlebotomists that I should be dead they are so small . . . not exactly the most encouraging statement ever), but I nearly pass out every time. Apparently, some researchers in India have developed a way to determine a person’s total cholesterol by simply taking a picture of the bag of their hand. I guess cholesterol is concentrated in creases of a person’s finger, and this new test would compare the patient’s hands to a database that contains images of hands with known total cholesterol level. Now, if this is truly accurate, I think a lot of people are going to be happy! Now if next time they’ll develop a way to do the gestational diabetes test that pregnant women have to take, with a digital camera as well, I think I’ll be happy too! I’m a little skeptical about this though — not sure if I want my health relying on a digital camera!