Pulmonary diseases (which include asthma, COPD, pneumonia, lung cancer, and tuberculosis) are an increasingly large portion of the global health burden. Developing countries with large low-income populations are disproportionately affected, because of increased risk factors (e.g. biomass cooking stoves) as well as poor access to health care and affordable screening tools for early detection.

The current standard for pulmonary disease diagnosis requires the use of expensive machines that need to be operated by specialized technicians, which limits their availability in the developing world. In order to address this need, we have developed a mobile diagnostics kit, which is comprised of a simple electronic stethoscope, a peak flow meter, and a questionnaire.  Using these tools, we are able to screen for a variety of pulmonary diseases.   This project is a collaboration with the former Chest Research Foundation (CRF), in Pune, India along with several other clinics.

Students: Bernardo Garcia, Vedaant Kukadia, Aneesh Anand, Christian Infante, Dan Chamberlain, John Mofor, Vivek Miglani, Daniela Ganelin, Mackenzie McDonald, Michelle Lauer, Ali Finkelstein.

Sponsor: NIH, Vodafone, MIT TATA Program