The GSMA yesterday announced the joint team of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grade Do Norte as the winner of its inaugural Mobile Health University Challenge. The team’s innovative project, called Sana AudioPulse, aims to make screening for hearing impairment easier by utilizing smartphones.
Almost six million Brazilians, and close to 590 million people globally, suffer from some degree of hearing loss. Brazilian law requires newborns to be screened for hearing impairment, but rural and poverty-stricken populations may not have access to a medical clinic. The open-source software being developed by the team would run a series of hearing screening tests on a cell phone, then securely and wirelessly transmit the results to a medical database to be analyzed by an audiologist. Staff, equipment, and funding limitations could be overcome by the use of this Sana AudioPulse technology.
The winning team will receive mentoring towards future development of the project, as well as opportunities to exhibit and demonstrate its ideas at key industry events like the GSMA’s upcoming Connected Living Latin America Summit being held in Brazil.
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