The often costly, sometimes difficult realm of urine testing has just been made far more accessible to a larger audience. Whereas in the past, trusted companies such as Siemans made dipsticks that could be read only by their own expensive machines, the new uCheck iPhone app makes urine testing something for everyone.
Developed by Myshkin Ingawale of Biosense Technologies, uCheck's goal is to make urine testing so incredibly easy and cost-effective that anyone around the world can monitor his own pee and gauge his health.
"Cellphones, everybody has them. And everybody pees. There has to be something interesting going on here," says Ingawale via an All Things D article.
Boasting on its Web page that it is "easy, affordable and hassle free," the uCheck Urinalysis App can be used:
- By anyone
- To reduce multiple visits to your doctor
- To store your history and analyze "trends"
The promotional page for uCheck also states that "due to substantial human intervention required in terms of noting observations at different time intervals with naked eye, their accuracy is always a suspect. uChek reduces this human intervention and is hence, much easier to use."
To get the uCheck to work, you start with a dipstick, much like any regular urine analysis. You dip the stick in a sample of your urine (samples may vary according to body size and what you had to drink that day), and then pull the stick out after two seconds (making sure to pull out the right end: the dry one). You then place the stick against a color spectrum map and take a picture of the image on your phone.
The uCheck app will analyze the color of your pee against the color spectrum and make determinations on how you're doing, health-wise.
According to the Web site, the uCheck can measure up to eight parameters (including glucose, proteins and ketones) in order to detect up to 25 diseases (including diabetes, urinary tract infection and pre-clampsia).
The uCheck is currently available for iPhones only, but will soon be available on Androids as well.
"The future might not be in your hands," says Ingawale. "It might well be down the toilet."
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