Men could soon test their fertility on a smartphone app
Just when we thought the most helpful thing phones could do is remind women take the pill on time every day, a new app could be here to help men and their fertility.
According to new research published by Science Translational Medicine, we could soon see the arrival of a new smartphone app which allows men to test their sperm count at home without the need of lab equipment.
Instead, you could be able to use a cheap device that attaches to your phone and connects to the said app.
Apparently, the method’s accuracy was pretty similar to computer-assisted laboratory analysis – even when someone totally inexperienced in using it and with no clinical background tried it out.
And using 350 semen samples, they found that the technique could provide men with an answer with 98% accuracy.
“Cultural and socially dominated stigma against male infertility testing hinders a large number of men from getting tested for infertility, especially in resource-limited African countries,” the study’s authors wrote.
“The work suggests that the integration of microfluidics, optical sensing accessories, and advances in consumer electronics, particularly smartphone capabilities, can make remote semen quality testing accessible to people in both developed and developing countries who have access to smartphones.”
In other words, this could be big milestone in at-home fertility testing for men around the world.
And as Dr. Hadi Shafiee, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who led the study told CNN, it wouldn’t cost a bomb either – it could even go on the market for less than $50 (£40).
“This is going to be the first fully automated device to make infertility testing as simple as home pregnancy tests for women,” he said.
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