

YC Hacks Winner: Athelas – Blood imaging and analysis from your smartphone - joshmlewis
http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25781-athelas

======
lbotos
2nd place:
[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-...](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25794-nunchuck-
js)

3rd place:
[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25746-vrniture)

My favorites:

[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25722-savant)
\- basically text searchable system playback. Think Timemachine meets
quicktime recorder.

[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-
web-...](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25720-gezi-web-browser)
\- Tabless browser. It was an interesting concept using the history as the
search/navigation display. He struggled to sell during the pitch.

[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listening...](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listeningpost)
\- This was an audio parser that realtime searched what you were saying in a
conversation. So if you said "Apple stock versus microsoft stock" it would
search and result would be displayed.

~~~
ekianjo
>
> [http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listening...](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25770-listening..).
> - This was an audio parser that realtime searched what you were saying in a
> conversation. So if you said "Apple stock versus microsoft stock" it would
> search and result would be displayed.

I guess it really depends on your way of speaking, voice, tone, because for me
this does not work very well. Too bad, the idea is great.

EDIT: so what? I get downvoted because it does not work as well for me as in
the demo? Interesting.

~~~
calbear81
One of the team members here, there's definitely a lot of work needed to
improve the general speech recognition capabilities behind it. We also were
mostly excited about the idea that over time as that technology improves this
type of service automatically improves as well.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
ajiang
Not only is this an impressive application of data science in solving a real
problem, I'm even more impressed that Tanay is still in high school and
already building great hacks leveraging computer vision and machine learning.
Truly awesome work that deserves the recognition.

------
tdaltonc
I love the idea and the scrappy implementation, but how does anyone know that
this works? What was it validated against? Should the title maybe be "Idea for
cheap disease analysis via blood sample and iOS"

~~~
george88b
As an analytical chemist also with a degree in biochem who has worked
extensively on blood analysis, this will not work at any meaningful rate of
reliability. I sometimes get frustrated when the key part of some great
breakthrough is hid behind a buzzword as if its a cure-all for the details. I
would love to know how "machine learning" is going to just magically make this
work at a reliable rate. I guess I am just a pessimistic lab rat.

~~~
gone35
Indeed it won't. Microscopy is hardly the bottleneck in hematology; and
neither is cell counting, which is already carried on by automated analyzers
for the most part anyway [1,2]. The problem is the need of _differential
staining_ : due to fundamental physical limits, no amount of machine learning
can ever distinguish key hematocytes like lymphocytes from granulocytes in
raw, unstained samples from microphotographs alone. So unless you use
spectroscopy --and there's been some work done on that, _eg_ [3,4]--, you need
to _spread_ , _fix_ and _stain_ your sample, each of which take a series of
choreographed steps, reagents and considerable skill in controlled conditions
to get (minimally) right [5] --hence the need for a lab.

So unless they attached a USB microspectrometer to the iPod, or streamlined
the existing sample preparation process in a low-cost, fully-portable form;
they are just solving the wrong problem.

[1] [http://www.mlo-online.com/articles/201401/automation-in-
hema...](http://www.mlo-online.com/articles/201401/automation-in-hematology-
heres-the-state-of-the-art-in-2014.php)

[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18550479](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18550479)

[3]
[http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=FiO-2008-FWD5](http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=FiO-2008-FWD5)

[4]
[http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstra...](http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/72/8_MeetingAbstracts/1705)

[5]
[http://mmserver.cjp.com/gems/blood/lh.6.1.houwen.pdf](http://mmserver.cjp.com/gems/blood/lh.6.1.houwen.pdf)

~~~
richardbrevig
I was wondering about the need for staining. Is there potential that they
could stain the blood sample and potentially get a result? I'm speaking
relatively hypothetically.

This is at least more in the right direction than what I had seen previously.

I saw much worse a few months ago at a competition I was in. The winning team
"created" a device (that looked like a USB key). They claimed that if you had
a sore throat you could take a sample with a q-tip, insert into the device,
and it would magically determine the presence of an infection. Those were
their words. I was horrified and when I approached the organizers afterwards
they didn't understand my explanation on why it was not possible. Indeed,
after that time as I have spoken about it most people do not understand that
it's not currently possible. Sci-fi blurs the realm of possibility for many
and it seems reasonable to them. Back to the actual contest, mine was an "idea
competition" and not a YC Hackathon.

Tanay's idea is leaps and bounds closer to the realm of possibility than the
idea behind the other team I witnessed. For that, his age, and his other work
on his startup clipped.me, I congratulate him and look forward to seeing him
come up with something truly useful in the future.

~~~
ihnorton
The Oxford Nanopore Minion is "usb scale":
[https://www.nanoporetech.com/technology/the-minion-
device-a-...](https://www.nanoporetech.com/technology/the-minion-device-a-
miniaturised-sensing-system/the-minion-device-a-miniaturised-sensing-system)

Not quite built in a weekend, but certainly within the realm of possibility.

~~~
Brakenshire
Just for context, Oxford Nanopore have struggled a fair bit with getting this
device to work. They have recently released quite promising prototype devices,
but the project is many years behind schedule. Albeit that isn't surprising
given what a massive shift in technology it is.

~~~
ihnorton
Oh, sure, but no one thinks they are violating the laws of physics anymore.
It's "just" engineering now to get the accuracy and sustained-read lengths
high enough.

------
joncalhoun
Was the lens ready prior to YC Hacks?

I am not trying to take away from what they built, but I am genuinely curious
what all was done prior to YC Hacks, since building the lens there seems like
a challenge in itself.

~~~
ttandon
Here's what I used: [http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-
conde...](http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/optical-lenses/ball-condenser-
lenses/n-bk7-ball-lenses/2041)

Basically, I took a piece of rubber, poked a hole in it, and fit the lens in.
It took a couple of hours to get the positioning right but after that it
worked like a charm :)

------
gotrecruit
one question: why is every single person in the YC Hacks photos using a
variant of the macbook? i'm someone who is about to pursue a CS degree, and
also embarking on an autodidactic journey in software development and i'm
entirely used to windows machines and do not personally like the mac interface
that much (possibly simply out of habit). why is it so prevalent for
developers and programmers to use macs? are windows machines inferior for such
purposes?

~~~
mikeknoop
Windows: good window manager, bad stack

Ubuntu/linux: bad window manager, good stack

OSX: good window manager, good stack

Window manager: how much time you spend fussing with UI settings and how
reliable it is day-to-day

Stack: how much time you spend installing, maintaining packages necessary for
what you want to do (apps, libs, envs, etc.)

~~~
gotrecruit
thanks for the concise response.

i'm curious though: as a layman in technical details but a fan of the tech
world, i've always been under the impression that since windows was developed
by a engineering-centric organization like MS, it should be far better for
such technical uses, as opposed to OSX, developed by a design-centric company
like Apple. am i completely wrong in that view?

~~~
mikeknoop
If you're doing popular web-stack programming (python, ruby, node) you'll have
a far better experience on a unix-based operating system since much of the
tooling is designed with it in mind.

Windows has ports here and there, and there's always Cygwin, but it's going to
feel like a compatibility layer the whole time you're using it (especially if
you're following guides/stack overflow help).

I've used all three stacks for years and couldn't happier with my latest MBPr
(hardware or software wise).

------
woah
Where did they get malarial blood during the hackathon?

~~~
jfoster
Perhaps the data they are using is available online somewhere.

~~~
joshmlewis
This is correct. He said he used training data sets online to test.

------
ihnorton
Nicely done! Manu Prakash's lab at Stanford has explored this bead-lens
approach quite a bit with the Foldscope project:

[http://www.foldscope.com/](http://www.foldscope.com/)

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0098781)

It has come up a few times on HN, e.g.:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591573)

------
thecritic1729
There have been a lot of these recently, actually something launched about a
week ago. Still its great for a 30 hr hackathon.

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-
app-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ianxen-rapid-iphone-app-to-
eradicate-malaria/#!bu496r)

Indiegogo:[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-
isl...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/end-malaria-on-bangka-island-
indonesia)

~~~
thecritic1729
In fact the whole turn your iphone into microscope is a growing area of
interest for bio-hackers.

This one seems to be similar to what was done at the hackathon. Would
definitely try it one of these days.

[http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-
microscope](http://kottke.org/13/10/turn-your-iphone-into-a-microscope)

[http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-
mic...](http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-
conversion/)

------
carbocation
This sounds like something that is done in every American hospital - the
"automated diff." In a blood count, the cells are examined and determined to
be red cells, white cells, or platelets. Within each category of cell there
are sub-types (neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, basophils)
and sub-sub-types (bands, metamyelocytes, etc). Basically, you can
automatically identify members of various cellular lineages.

Cool that they got this to work through an iPhone camera.

------
deepGem
Two words. Hats off !!. My initial pessimistic instinct told me that this was
not completely built at the hackathon. Glad I read through the comments.

------
owenversteeg
Cool! This definitely deserved to win, I think. At the least it's better than
the other YC Hacks thing I looked at, which had XSS holes!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130482)

------
earino
In the article's slideshow there are a bunch of interesting pictures. The very
last picture looks to be a box full of Lego blocks? What did that component of
the solution do? :)

~~~
ttandon
Glad you mentioned it! Originally I was using that as a mount for the
microscope, but unfortunately the lights placed in it weren't strong enough.
The iPhone camera flash turned out to work best.

------
seesomesense
Try getting FDA approval for this and see what happens.

------
r00k
For those that attended, was it tough to concentrate in that large warehouse-y
room? Looked loud and busy.

~~~
joshmlewis
It was noisy at times and the chairs were pretty flimsy but that's part of the
fun of hackathons. It's a test of a lot of things like time management,
concentration, will power, teamwork, communication, etc. Afterawhile you get
so focused on what you're doing you don't notice how big it is.

Some teams were in the old YC building as well. I have to say they did a
pretty good job organizing. Wifi was perfect, power was everywhere, food was
awesome and plentiful, events happened on time.

------
WordBiLLY_maker
Athelas is pretty awesome, and potentially life-saving. Fantastic job Tanay.

------
JoshTriplett
Very impressive work, and great name as well.

------
tmrtn
How is this different than lifelens?

~~~
calbear81
Is lifelens active anymore? Their blog looks like it's been hacked and hasn't
been updated in a while. More info on LifeLens here
([http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2014/07/30/biomimicry-
continues-to-evolve-fly-inspires-tiny-microphone/))

------
greggman
Interesting that nothing in the original post says iOS. Only HN's title. In
fact the page linked to says

"BUILT FOR Android iOS Mobile – HTML Web Desktop – Mac Desktop – Other
Hardware / Wearable"

~~~
joshmlewis
I was there when he demo'd and he used an iPhone. He never mentioned anything
else so I assumed.

