As one of the leading travel nursing agencies in Texas, part of our job is keeping up on the latest developments in the world of health care. Every once and a while, we get to coma across something so interesting that we think everyone, whether they’re travel nurses or not, will want to hear about.
A recent article on CNET News explores the possibility of using a cell phone to diagnose colds and flus. It works via an application that can record the quality of a person’s cough. Trained travel nurses can already tell whether a cough is productive or unproductive (aka “dry” or “wet) by listening closely. A company called Star Analytical Services is working on the application that tries to do the same thing.
Here’s how the app works: once it’s installed onto the phone, a user can record his or her cough. That recording is then instantly compared with a vast database that lists coughs of people from both genders, and various ages and weights.
Of course, like many travel nursing agencies in Texas, we noted that an application like this could raise some issues. While all travel nurses and travel nursing agencies in Texas know that certain respiratory illnesses have distinct-sounding coughs, can comparing a a single cough sample to a database really be effective in diagnosing an illness? For example, a heavy smoker or an asthmatic will have a cough that sounds differently.
If anything, this program can offer an educated guess. But it doesn’t look like a program, at this point, can be as effective as an actual travel nurse when it comes to telling people how ill they are.
