Diagnosing STDs with smartphones -- there's an app for that

WASHINGTON -- British researchers are trying to create mobile phone software that can diagnose sexually transmitted diseases.

If they can pull it off, smartphone users will have this to look forward to: place urine or saliva on a USB-sized computer chip, plug it into a cell phone, and get a diagnosis within minutes.

The spread of diseases Brits refer to as STIs -- sexually transmitted infections -- is rampant in the United Kingdom, with nearly 500,000 cases last year.

Two-thirds of women and one-half of men diagnosed with STIs last year were under 25 years old, and public health officials tell The Guardian that many of them are too embarrassed to seek treatment.

"Britain is one of the worst (countries) in western Europe for teenage pregnancy and STIs. That there's a major embarrassment factor here, especially among young people, makes the situation worse," says University of London consultant Dr. Tariq Sadiq.

Many doctors are skeptical. A sexual disease specialist at Australia's University of New South Wales tells The Sydney Morning Herald that a recent study of home-testing kits for chlamydia were inaccurate 90-percent of the time.

"They were just a joke," says Prof. Basil Donovan. "I think in our lifetime it will happen and at the moment there are rapid home tests available for some conditions like HIV that are actually quite good."

The premise is not so far-fetched. For many years, researchers have been developing mobile diagnostics, sometimes called "a laboratory in a backpack," that public health workers could take into remote regions or underdeveloped countries to diagnose diseases using digital technology.