How To Help Malaria Sufferers Without Using Patents: Crowdsourcing Diagnosis
from the working-together dept
A little while back we wrote about Nathan Myhrvold's sniffy comment that if you're not doing anything to help people suffering from malaria, you have no right to criticize his patent troll operation, Intellectual Ventures. As we also noted, this argument is rather undermined by the fact that his research involves such deeply impractical solutions as "photonic fences" and using magnets to make mosquitoes explode.
If lives are to be saved here and now, and not in some patent-encumbered fantasy world tomorrow, what we need is a rather different approach that works with resources that are available and cheap today. Perhaps a crowdsourced solution like this:
Background: There are 600,000 new malaria cases daily worldwide. The gold standard for estimating the parasite burden and the corresponding severity of the disease consists in manually counting the number of parasites in blood smears through a microscope, a process that can take more than 20 minutes of an expert microscopist's time.
Digitized blood sample images were placed on a Web site, and then people were invited to count the parasites in each. A special algorithm was used to combine the analyses from several visitors to produce a better collective detection rate. It seems to work:
Objective: This research tests the feasibility of a crowdsourced approach to malaria image analysis. In particular, we investigated whether anonymous volunteers with no prior experience would be able to count malaria parasites in digitized images of thick blood smears by playing a Web-based game.Results: Over 1 month, anonymous players from 95 countries played more than 12,000 games and generated a database of more than 270,000 clicks on the test images. Results revealed that combining 22 games from nonexpert players achieved a parasite counting accuracy higher than 99%. This performance could be obtained also by combining 13 games from players trained for 1 minute.
That's pretty impressive. And unlike bonkers ideas such as "photonic fences", this crowdsourced approach requires little beyond bandwidth for distributing images and enough people participating. Putting the two together potentially allows huge numbers of blood samples to be checked for the presence of malaria infection with high accuracy once the system has been refined to include additional factors like parasite species and growth stages. That makes this approach scalable -- crucially important when there are over half a million new cases of malaria each year. The same can hardly said about using magnets to make mosquitoes explode.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: crowdsourcing, malaria, patents
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
/s
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Galaxy Zoo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can't a computer do this?
P.S. I just patented "method and process for identifying malaria parasites on a computer."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can't a computer do this?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can't a computer do this?
Computers are a long way away from figuring out images with 99% accuracy and they are certainly a long way away from 'training' that you describe.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Can't a computer do this?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You sure they're not trying to make a low budget syfy movie, lol?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Numbers Discrepancy
[...]there are over half a million new cases of malaria each year.
Which one is accurate?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Numbers Discrepancy
500,000 = half a million
600,000 > 500,000
I'd like to thank my second grade teacher, Mrs. Schaefer for the valuable skills that allowed me to perform this difficult mathematical comparison.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Numbers Discrepancy
These stats from WHO claim over 200 million cases worldwide in 2010 with an estimated 655,000 deaths.
http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/index.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Numbers Discrepancy
Based on the 2010 number and basic math that would be roughly 550,000 cases a day in 2010.
Also, the paper cited in Glyn's article references a lot of sources from 2012, so it appears they are using more recent numbers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Numbers Discrepancy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A quick check at WHO reveals they claim in 2011 there were 216 million cases. 600,000 * 365 = 219 million.
I'm guessing the first number is about as accurate as these numbers get.
The half million probably refers to the number of deaths each year.
Makes banning Zen magnets look pretty stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Instead of Patents
Those calling for their taxes to be raised (Warren Buffet, George Soros and their ilk: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2012/12/11/warren-buffett-and-george-soros-want-higher-esta te-tax-than-obama-proposes/) should instead create a Billionaire Prize Club for non-patented cures to malaria, HIV, etc.
If Buffett is so insistent that he has too much money (he is stealing Oregon state taxes via PGE: http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/permalink/uben-8ek28b?opendocument), he should at least be more philanthropic with his ill gotten gains. What a douche…
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Instead of Patents
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Instead of Patents
- You only need look in a mirror, there will a huge one.
"If Buffett is so insistent that he has too much money"
- I don't recall him ever saying that
"he should at least be more philanthropic"
- Perhaps you should research a topic prior to commenting
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Instead of Patents
What a FU defending a Billionaire who owes back taxes…search Buffett+taxes
“Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Owes Taxes Going Back To 2002”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.htm l
“US Government Countersues Warren Buffett Company Over Unpaid Taxes”
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/03/10/us-government-buffett/
To avoid the raised taxes next year:
“Berkshire Hathaway buys $1.2 billion of its own shares at a price higher than what CEO Warren Buffett has said he'd pay.”
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/12/berkshire-buffett-buyback/
Why has Buffett setup 90%+ of his estate to go to charity and not the govt?
He wants to prevent the Govt from taking what is his.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't be an entitled life pirate.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]