Late To the Party Again: Bill Gates and Canada Want to Throw Money at Battery-Powered, Hand-Held Diagnostic Devices

From Yahoo Health. First, it was a mini-X Prize for a waterless toilet (the composting toilets we invented about 40 years ago), and now it's a mini-X Prize for something else we already invented: the SmartPhone app. No wonder he no longer runs Microsoft!!

"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a Canadian NGO on Friday announced $32 million to fund research for the discovery and development of affordable tools for rapidly diagnosing diseases in developing nations.

The aim is to diagnose and treat illness on the spot in the rural regions of poor countries, and potentially save more lives now lost to delays.

"Imagine a hand-held, battery-powered device that can take a drop of blood and, within minutes, tell a healthcare worker in a remote village whether a feverish child has malaria, dengue or a bacterial infection," said Peter Singer, head of Grand Challenges Canada which is partnering with the Microsoft founder Bill Gates's charitable organization on the project.

"More rapid diagnosis of malaria alone could prevent 100,000 deaths a year."

Gates's foundation is providing $21.1 million over three years to this research while Grand Challenges, backed by the Canadian government, is contributing $10.8 million, they said in a statement.

The research will focus on five areas: drawing blood and prepping it for analysis, analyzing biological samples to identify diseases, developing technologies to obtain and transmit data and receive test results back, and ensuring these devices will work in the field where there is often no electricity or refrigeration."

Wouldn't a SmartPhone with a solar battery charger fit the bill? There are already apps for some of these tests, but others would still need to be developed--I give it a week.

Instead of (again) throwing money to the wind to solve a relatively easy problem, why don't they just subsidize SmartPhones, the apps, and solar chargers to every Third World doctor out in the bush? I bet it wouldn't even cost HALF of what they want to spend.