[LINK] Who Owns Mobile Phones

[Stephen Loosley]

Craig writes,

> > How to stop Facebook and Apple from taking over the mobile phone industry
>
> ..and let other corporations take control instead.  I notice that there's no mention
> of people, the users, the owners of the phones having control over something so
> important to their lives in the modern world..


Agreed.. and just a thought, based on recent new research, the “ownership” of our
mobile phones in the near future might not be restricted to business.

Maybe in future, Governments might want a bigger say in the technical-features of
phones? For example, phones capable of registering the presence of drugs-of-abuse
in a welfare-recipient environment? Or elderly nutrition, or communicable diseases?

For example, quoting new research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170913193033.htm

“The latest versions of most smartphones contain at least two and sometimes three built-in cameras. Researchers at the University of Illinois would like to sell mobile device manufactures on the idea of adding yet another image sensor as a built-in capability for health diagnostic, environmental monitoring, and general-purpose sensing applications.

Three years ago, the National Science Foundation provided a pair of University of Illinois professors with a grant to develop technology called "Lab-in-a-Smartphone."

Over that time, the electrical and computer engineering research team have published papers detailing potential ways the mobile devices could provide health diagnostic tests, and other measurements, which have normally been performed in a laboratory setting.

The team successfully demonstrated a very compact inexpensive system that performs optical spectroscopy in a form factor that can fit inside the body of a phone. It uses inexpensive components and the same kind of LEDs being used for flash illumination in phones.

The technology has specific impact on developing countries or rural areas, where getting to a doctor's office is can be challenging.

The same methodology demonstrated in the paper can be applied to quantitatively detecting biomarkers for nutrition, cardiac health, sepsis, cancer, pregnancy, infectious disease, drugs of abuse, hormones, and many others.

"I think mobile health is going to mean medical diagnostic tests for nutrition or wellness, a service that the major smartphone companies can help provide," Cunningham said.

"Smartphone companies are looking for ways that healthcare can fold in with their capabilities. We're hoping to find companies that are interested in differentiating their phone from others by having such sensing capability."

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Cheers,
Stephen