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A healthy high school athlete suddenly falls ill, but doctors struggle to find the cause. Eventually, they nail an unlikely culprit: a fungus along her regular running route.

Real-time information about air pollutants and allergens could have replaced months of isolation and testing. That鈥檚 why Jiayang (Joe) He and Sep Makhsous, as UW engineering doctoral students, developed. By combining government air quality data with personalized readings from a small portable monitor, their app creates a custom map to show where the user is exposed to pollutants and allergens.

鈥淭he three things people are concerned with are mold, dust and pollution,鈥� says Makhsous, now a postdoctoral fellow at CoMotion. 鈥淲e want to give them a location where it鈥檚 happening, so they can take the appropriate action to stay healthy.鈥�

With a $50,000 grant from the Innovation Gap Fund, the team is turning a UW research project into a viable commercial product. They鈥檝e conducted interviews with pulmonologists, pediatricians and people with airborne sensitivities, to understand the needs 鈥� and they鈥檙e ready to test the app widely in preparation for its release.

The Bilingual Pesticide Safety Project

Although most Washington farmworkers are Spanish speakers, critical pesticide-safety information is primarily in English. Misapplied pesticides can make workers sick, cause environmental harm or result in financial losses for growers.

A pair of mobile apps from the are designed to mitigate those risks. Developed by the UW , the apps provide a searchable database of the safety and handling information for pesticides commonly used in Washington state, with Spanish translations.

The Bilingual Pesticide Safety team extracts the label鈥檚 relevant details, translating and adding them to the databases. The apps work offline, so they can be used in the field without an internet connection, though neither replaces the official safety information.

鈥淲hen people have the right information, they can do their job properly 鈥� and management has more confidence,鈥� says Kit Galvin, a research scientist and principal investigator on the project. Farm managers who tested one of the apps said it helped them effectively explain the pesticide safety measures to their workers.

One of the apps 鈥� 鈥� covers 40 pesticides often used in Washington鈥檚 apple and pear orchards. The other, , will include many pesticides and cover most WA specialty crops. It may expand beyond the state.

Available: 隆Etiquetas de pesticidas, ahora!/Pesticide Labels, Now! is available now from and . PestiSeguro/PestiSafe will be available in 2021.

EarHealth

It鈥檚 the middle of the night. Your toddler is fussy and keeps rubbing her ear. Bleary-eyed and half-awake, you struggle to figure out if your child needs a doctor鈥檚 visit and possibly medication.

A piece of paper and a smartphone app could help you decide.

, designed by a team of UW computer scientists and ear, nose and throat doctors, checks for fluid behind the eardrum 鈥� a common symptom of ear infections.

The user cuts and folds a regular piece of paper into a small funnel, then attaches one end to the phone鈥檚 speaker with the other end next to the ear. The app sends a chirping sound through the ear canal and analyzes the echo to determine if fluid has built up behind the ear.

鈥淭he app only takes two seconds in each ear,鈥� explains Randy Bly, an assistant professor of head and neck surgery at the UW School of Medicine. His team has found that children are willing to participate 鈥渂ecause it鈥檚 on a smartphone and it鈥檚 interesting to them 鈥� the acoustic chirps sound somewhat like a bird.鈥�

Diagnosing ear infections can be difficult, especially in children who have trouble describing their symptoms. The EarHealth app is easy to use and accurate. In a test at Seattle Children鈥檚 Hospital, the app鈥檚 algorithm correctly identified the presence of fluid 85% of the time.