Google Builds a Specialized Tablet to Help Doctors Fight Ebola

Ebola is a lethal disease that has claimed thousands of lives in the African nations. The doctors treating Ebola infected patients are also highly at risk. The doctors attending the Ebola victims have to wear protective gears like a moon suit, along with gloves and masks because of the contagiousness of the disease. Google has also involved itself into the battle against the virus and is doing its bit to help fight the fatal disease.  The tech giant has built a tablet that could replace the present medical record keeping system.

Until now, the record-keeping method adopted by the doctors was exhausting. The Ebola fighters have to note down the information on paper and then move to the edge of the medical enclosure with the writing. The medical representative would then shout out the information to the person outside the high-risk zone so that the companion doctor can take down the notes. The paper is then destroyed to limit the virus to the contaminated enclosure itself.

The new tablet designed by Google will help in a major way to record and share information on Ebola. The tablet has a polycarbonate coating and hence, can be dipped in chlorine. The gadget has to be dipped in chlorine for about 10 minutes, which makes it suitable to be used outside the infected area without the moon suit. The specialised Google tablet works on Android and lets doctors send the data wirelessly across the globe right from the high-risk zone.

This tablet technology is extremely significant and can serve as a detector to sense the progression of Ebola virus. Meanwhile, medical experts are planning to modify the technology to fight the upcoming epidemics. Scientist Dr. Eric D. Perakslis from the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, said that he is working with MSF to make the technology “open source”. It would help with free sharing of software and hardware designs at large. “You can think of other highly toxic environments, even laboratory environments, where this could really be helpful,” said Perakslis.

The top tech leader has done many contributions to serve the mankind; it also has a charitable arm called Google.org, which is a crisis response team to help the disaster struck people. The new tablet will mark another milestone for the company in terms of innovations that help make lives of people better.