"We wanted to be able to measure lung function on any type of phone you might encounter around the world — smartphones, dumb phones, landlines, pay phones," said Shwetak Patel, one of the project’s researchers. "With SpiroCall, you can call a 1-800 number, blow into the phone and use the telephone network to test your lung function."
Researchers fed a machine-learning algorithm data from more than 4,000 people who used the app and traditional clinical measurements in clinics around Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., India and Bangladesh.
