Airports are riddled with germs and sickly folk that have no business being in public, right? In most instances you can get away from them, but if they’re on your flight, the risk of getting sick increases ten fold. Or something like that. If Belgium’s Biorics’ latest project gets off the ground then we may never have to worry about flying with sick people ever again.
Last month, Biorics submitted an application for a patent that would detect and analyze people’s coughs. The detection process would be made possible by outfitting terminals or gate areas with microphones that would feed each cough through a program that deciphers whether or not your cough is normal or filled with virii. Because of the multiple microphones set up in an area, the program will be able to triangulate your position and warn authorities of your location. This program is said to work with animals as well.
In a particular embodiment of the , present invention a cough detection algorithm is used to determine, e.g. by localization of coughs, whether the cough belongs to the carrier of the portable device (e.g. mobile phone, PDA, laptop) or to a third party – see Fig. 1b. Hence the portable device is used for remote sensing of coughs of third parties as well as localization of these coughs, i.e. that they are not from the person carrying the portable device but from a remote person.
This whole thing sort of reminds me of how Batman finds the Joker in “The Dark Knight.”
via New Scientist
Unfortunately all systems for detecting symptoms of pandemic disease in travelers have a fatal flaw.
People are contagious – able to transmit illness to others – before they have symptoms. In the case of pandemic flu, people are contagious for a day or two before symptoms develop.
We can scan passengers to detect those who have fevers or to detect those who have suspicious coughs. But these scans will miss infected passengers who are not yet showing symptoms but who are already infecting those around them.
During a pandemic, air travel cannot be made safe for travelers and it will help to spread illness to other areas of the world.
Starlight,
Good point – H5N1 may have people shedding germs before showing symptoms – unlike SARS.
Using an ifra-red camera to check for fever or sickness may not work like it did for SARS.
According to the WHO there was one young girl who died of H5N1 but did not have any upper respritory infection.
Still this is good – though it sounds like big brother.
I hope we hear more about this on a HHS webcast. Eight webcasts are available at PandemicFlu.gov
Kobie