uChek raises the stakes in smartphone health care with camera-based urine analysis

The iPhone. Is there anything it can't do? The trend towards self-monitoring and informal health tracking continues with uChek. Featured today over at Wired, this app enables you to automatically read, chart and track a variety of urinalysis tests on your iPhone.

The product works by leveraging the iPhone's highly sensitive camera to read tints from inexpensive urine dip stick tests. Developed by Mumbai-based Myshkin Ingawale, an MIT grad, the app shifts monitoring away from expensive clinics and into the home.

I do worry about lighting variation but I assume there will be calibration of some sort built into the test strips.

It's still early days. The website is still creaky. I was unable to sign up for the email list and the shop, which will eventually sell the test strips for US$20 a package, hasn't gone live yet.

Here's a TED talk from last year, where Ingawale talks about an earlier invention called ToucHb. It introduced blood tests without needles.