Smartphone app can test your urine

Uchek, a forthcoming iPhone and Android app, was launched on stage at the TED Conference underway this week in Long Beach, California.

"Everybody pees, and everybody carries a cellphone," said Myshkin Ingawale, the co-founder of med tech company Biosense Technologies, reports Mashable. "We figured we had to be able to do something with this."

While there are commercially available test strips that can get the job done, Mashable adds that they can be hard to examine yourself, consisting of 10 colored pads that change colors after you dip them in urine.

However, the app works by automatically using your smartphone's camera to take a series of photos of a standard test strip (which you dip into a cup of your urine) to analyze the data. Then the app, in a matter of seconds, provides charts specifying the levels of glucose, bililrubin, proteins, specific gravity, ketones, leukocytes, nitrites, urobilinogen, and hematuria present in your urine.

Wired adds that the app is especially useful for those managing diabetes and kidney, bladder, and liver problems, or for those checking to see whether or not they have a urinary tract infection.

"The idea is to get people closer to their own information," Ingawale, 29, said. "I want people to better understand what is going on with their bodies."

At last year's TED conference, Ingawale introduced a "bloodless" blood test for anemia that costs 20 cents a pop.