Actually, watching the video now rather than just reading the text, the software does do image analysis to determine whether or not malaria is present.

OK, that makes more sense now.

Well, given the look of the two slides, it seems like it wouldn't be the most difficult problem in the world to do some image analysis to determine.

That would be an interesting article, but as far as I can tell this thing is nothing but a microscope.

You're going to need a trained human in the loop just to handle the blood and apparatus in a sanitary way.

Humans are inherently better than any app at the image task, so why not just let the human do it?

This looks like a non-solution to me.

You have some false assumptions in your argument, mainly that it's just as easy to train and distribute humans across Africa (and elsewhere) to do malaria diagnosis as it is to develop and distribute copies of this software.

Moreover, as the software is improved, updating the software -- and raising the baseline of quality -- is a unique advantage over the "just use humans" solution.

The scenario is not "download an app and it detects malaria".

The scenario is "person trained to work with blood samples without spreading/contracting HIV deployed into field packing a small digital microscope and support software built on WP7." This person is likely already doing a variety of other community medicine and is the closest thing to a medical doctor many of their patients will ever see.

There's no argument against giving the practicioner a helpful tool, only that it may be automating an insignificant part of the overall problem (looking at the image).

The article says they can also determine if the blood has malaria computationally.