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Coughr.com

Submitted by: thecougar
Created: Feb 26, 2007, 12:57 am

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The Idea

Health insurance companies lose billions each year due to people heading to the emergency room over the slightest cough or runny nose. Anything that could save even a few trips to the doctor could be very valuable to the right company. The idea behind Coughr.com is simple. Cough into a microphone and the site tells you whether you've likely got a bad case bronchitis or just need to hock a lugie. While the front end looks simple enough, it would use advanced signal processing in the backend to look for tell-tale signs of various diseases. It would also have a few simple questions to help reduce the chance of a false diagnosis.

I thought of this idea when I was...

thinking of a web 2.0-style app to use as a scenario for an interview.

Comments Posted

siddey Posted: February 27, 2007, 1:22 am

Is it possible to tell what someone has just by the sound of their cough?

monocultured Posted: February 27, 2007, 6:58 am

it would be an interesting solution if you actually could create it, (accounting for different microphones and locations and what have you), but wouldn't it be better to have this in an actual ER to check for related symptoms?

i have no doubt that some hospitals or insurers would like to have this implemented, but once the app botches something (all apps do), instead of being able to blame a specific doctor or nurse for giving a poor diagnosis you'll have a whole slew of people with no-one in particular to blame for the bug/feature.

i recall reading about video-conferencing for simpler questions and diagnosis; have you checked into how well those work? (if deployed at all? something for rural areas?) augmenting those systems (with for example a caugh analysis thingy) might be of use.

generic_idea_machine Posted: February 27, 2007, 11:41 am

"From a drop of water, a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other"

that being said. Thank God for free healthcare in Canada

jill Posted: February 28, 2007, 5:15 pm

The cough thing may not be the best place to start (people either have to own good quality microphones or they have to go somewhere and use a public one - Yuck).

The two themes of (a) tele-medicine and (b) using sound analysis for useful purposes are both pretty neat, separately as well as together.

I think you're on to something, though not exactly in the way you've proposed it.

Also it has to be innocuous enough not to attract medical negligence type liability.

Brenden Posted: April 18, 2007, 1:11 pm

we have something like that in Ontario, called TellHealth

scrollinondubs Posted: June 1, 2007, 4:59 pm

there's a company here in Phx, AZ called Safe & Sound Solutions, Inc that's doing some interesting things with self-diagnosis and monitoring using cell phones. With the bronchitis assessment I think there's more variables involved to be able to render a diagnosis (ie. need to place stethascope in various places and listen for fluid in lungs)

given medical malpractice suits and difficulty of the diagnosis i think this would be a tough sell in this form.

Rich2809 Posted: November 6, 2007, 6:05 am

I like this a lot

Hello!

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