Dr. Selim Suner, director of emergency and disaster medicine at Brown University, has developed a medical application that can measure intraocular anemia in just two seconds without taking a blood sample from the patient.
Suner’s artificial intelligence-enabled application eMoglobin allows you to instantly measure a patient’s level of anemia using a square photo taken with a mobile phone. A world first, this application saves lives in diagnosing time-sensitive bleeding emergencies.
It is estimated that about one-third of the world’s population is anemic. To detect anemia, which manifests itself in symptoms such as weakness, fatigue, and pallor, you need to go to the hospital, have a blood test, and wait for a report. This takes about 2 hours.
However, a telemedicine application developed by a Turkish doctor-engineer living in the United States has made it possible to measure anemia literally “in the blink of an eye.” The application, which will be available worldwide upon approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will reduce tests that take him from two hours to two seconds.
Dr. Suner attended an international conference in Antalya last week, where he revealed details of the eMoglobin application his team has developed, and touched on stories from Robert’s College in Istanbul to the Faculty of Engineering at Brown University in the United States. He applied to medical school at the same university and now works in the emergency department at Rhode Island Hospital.
In an interview, Dr. Suner explained how he became an emergency medicine specialist in the United States. He first went to become an engineer. “After graduating from Robert College in Turkey, I went to Brown University in the United States to study engineering. I first studied electrical engineering, then switched to biomedical engineering. I worked as a doctor to cover my daily expenses, and there I encountered the emergency medical community and by chance a professor asked if anyone wanted to study medicine, so I raised my hand and entered medical school the next day.” says Suner.
Dr. Suner, who claims engineering has always been his first love, said: A percentage of emergency patients reliably collect and analyze blood. Hemoglobin, which indicates whether a patient has anemia, is one of the measurements analyzed. Thinking about quick measurements, that is the beginning of this project.
“First, it wasn’t a phone application. We took intraocular pictures with a digital camera, mathematically evaluated the digital data, and correlated it with the patient’s hemoglobin data. The results were good. The phone camera. are very powerful now.These phones have great capabilities for displaying megapixels and 16-bit data,” said the doctor.
“So the project has become a mobile phone application. Anyone who wants to test can take a picture of their eye with their mobile phone and after two seconds the hemoglobin concentration is determined,” he said.
In an ethics committee-approved study of hundreds of patients, Dr. Suner compared measurements obtained from the patient’s blood with data obtained from photographs of both the right and left eye. and explained that he developed the eMoglobin application.
“We have compared data taken from the right and left eyes of hundreds of patients. We have 3,500 photographs in this regard. We are currently working with 500 more patients. 2 grams of error, which is a very acceptable level. This margin of error is sufficient. clinically,” he pointed out.
Lifesaving in emergency bleeding
Emphasize that it is very difficult to carry out blood tests, especially in developing countries, due to limited laboratories and facilities, and measurement of hemoglobin level is very important, especially for the diagnosis of nutritional anemia. pointed out the doctor.
With this application, you can quickly measure the anemia level of many people and make interventions accordingly. Having the app available before hospitalization is required is also very important. For example, with the help of the application you can immediately deal with cases of internal bleeding risk. The test can be repeated after 30 minutes, and heavy bleeding is detected within seconds, saving hospital costs.
“For use in patients, we need to get FDA approval in the United States and we need to submit some data. Apply. Once approved, it is very easy to spread around the world.It will be available for immediate download from your phone app store making it easily accessible to anyone in the world.
