Analyze your semen with a smartphone!

 I know. The visuals are terrible. But it’s true. You (if you’re a guy) can check out your sperm count as well as how well they’re moving. It’s as simple as a home pregnancy test, they say. Apparently, you do this by clamping a 3-D printed microscope onto the phone, as shown in the photo below. I don’t know where the semen sample goes. Also, do you need to buy the gloves?

Apparently, this is the wave of the future, according to Dr. Eric Topol, author of The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands. (I thought the subtitle was apt.) You will be able to do your own ultrasounds, run all your vital signs, measure your breath and lung function, keep track of your sleep patterns, continuously monitor blood glucose, and analyze blood and other fluids. Actually, those smartphone functions are operational now. For some of those functions, such as blood glucose and heart functions, you stick a band-aid like sensor on your body and the output from those devices goes to your phone. 

“Bypassing doctors,” Topol says, “people will be generating a significant portion of their medical data themselves.” As much as I love to bypass doctors, it seems to me that the problem with this continuous monitoring is that people will needlessly and continuously worry about the state of their health. For example, they will see that the time they spend in deep sleep is not what someone deems optimal. I think people worry too much about their sleep as it is.

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