Researchers at Nottingham University in the UK have produced a mobile phone app designed to identify which newborns are premature enough to need specialist care.

Ultrasound scanners are not always available in the developing world, so the date of conception is not always accurately calculated. But this smartphone app can determine the gestational age of newborn babies using distinctive features on their feet, face and ears to identify those who may need urgent medical care.

Michel Valstar is an assistant professor at Nottingham University’s school of computing: “It’s created to crowd-source as much data of as many babies as we possibly can to create an app that will automatically detect how old a baby is, in terms of gestational age. So it just opens the camera for you and gives an outline of where the face should be, or the ear should be, or the foot should be.”

Apps like these are used to identify all sorts of diseases these days, including some cancers .But it’s not just usef