Bringing Mobile Health to the Underdeveloped World

Existing wearables such as the Fitbit wristband and Apple Watch allow users to track their health statistics around the clock. They have become increasingly popular over the past few years. However, in the context of under-developed countries where people may earn less than 2 US dollars a day, these wearable devices are still pricey and thus constitute a critical bottleneck in their adoption. This proposal aims at developing an ultra-low-cost (i.e., less than 5 US dollars per unit) wearable device by reusing cheap earphones as versatile sensors. The rationale behind this is that human organs (e.g., the heart and lungs) produce vibrations. These vibrations travel through the human body and arrive at the human ears. The diaphragms of the earphone speaker respond to these signals, producing a weak electric signal that can be leveraged to track human physiological activities. Compared to the current wearable devices, the proposed solution does not rely on any dedicated sensors; thus it reduces the need for additional instrumentation and can rapidly and unobtrusively serve large and diverse populations worldwide with low-cost, everyday earphones. We believe this is an important endeavor in bringing mobile health to the broad public