The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 Issue 2 (Apr 2015) | Page 22

Mobile Device Aids Cervical Cancer Detection in Low-Resource Settings
Continued from page 19

health features with cutting-edge biomedical optics to enable
healthcare providers to improve case management and optimise
the use of healthcare resources, in order to aid accurate diagnosis of cancer at its earliest stages.
Typical optical coherence tomography (OCT) machines in large
medical practices or clinics cost upward of $50,000USD; MobileODT's costs just $400USD.
The device connects to a smartphone, and projects white or
green light onto the cervix, it then takes an image clearly at
high magnification, and uploads it securely so a physician can
quickly—and correctly—detect whether cancer treatment is
necessary.
Ariel Beery, MobileODT’s CEO, says “five out of every six
women screened for cervical cancer are unnecessarily sent for
treatment. MobileODT’s device eliminates this waste by getting
the diagnosis right, thereby enabling budget-limited municipalities and countries to screen 3.6 times more women for every
dollar spent on standard examinations.”
Cervical cancer prevention remains a top medical priority for
much of the developing world. In order to minimise the gap
in screening availability between the developed and the developing worlds, visual inspection with acetic acid (or VIA) was
developed as a cheap, relatively efficient and easy to implement screening method for low-income settings. As a result,
in many developing countries, VIA is the primary step, and the
accepted standard, for cervical cancer screening; however, it is
rarely corroborated by colposcopy and biopsy. Despite its success, VIA presents a major challenge: with a positive predictive
value (PPV) of 17%, five out of six patients receive cryotherapy
unnecessarily, as a result of a false positives. In order to reduce
the number of false positives, the mobile colposcope serves as
an adjunct to VIA, while also providing a technological platform
that enables high-end multi-modal imaging.
MobileODT is currently conducting additional trials with the St.
Francis Hospital, Scripps Medical Centre at the University of
Pennsylvania, and Rambam Hospital in Israel, to test their proprietary approach to polarization difference imaging and multispectral imaging. The company also has partnerships in place
with a range of global health organisations including Partners in
Health, the Centre for Global Health at Massachusetts General
Hospital, PROSALUD, the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, and
the Scripps Medical Centre, to pilot an advanced prototype in
Kenya, Haiti, Mexico, Botswana and the United States.
Speaking to the Washington Post at last month’s SXSW event
the company’s Director of Strategy and Communications Amit
Safir said, “Our product uses a smartphone to help detect cervical cancer, which kills more than a quarter of a million women
every year, many of them living in areas without access to
screenings. Our product brings cervical cancer screenings to
anywhere with X