On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Oral cancer is straightforward for dentists to detect early on. They can easily identify lesions in the mouth that are precancerous. But for people living in parts of the world with few dentists, these lesions can go undiagnosed until it is too late for effective treatment. Now a patent application has been filed for a device that aims to tackle that problem, designed by Manu Prakash of Stanford University and his colleagues.
Called OScan, the device has bite guides to hold open a patient's mouth and a mount that allows a smartphone or digital camera to attach to the front. In this way, health workers in the field can easily photograph the inside of a person's mouth and send those images wirelessly to an off-site dentist or medical expert who can evaluate them for signs of malignancy. In countries such as India, where there can be as few as one dentist per quarter of a million residents in rural areas and where oral cancer accounts for more than 40 percent of all cancer-related deaths, OScan has the potential to save many lives.
Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism
Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.
When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.
Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber
