Spotting the signs

A trainee midwife has developed an award-winning app to help spot signs of illness on black and brown skin. Ruby Jackson, a student at the University of Brighton, came up with idea while working on a placement in Ghana. Conditions such as jaundice, pre-eclampsia and mastitis can present differently on non-white skin.

Ruby’s app, Melantal, provides a visual guide to help medics and patients spot the signs and know what to look for. She told the BBC how her experiences at the neonatal unit in Ghana had inspired her. She said: “They were showing us a baby and saying, 'this baby is here because it has jaundice' and showing us what they were looking at, for example the soles of the feet and the whites of the eyes. At university we were taught [to look for] yellow skin."

A report last year revealed women from black ethnic backgrounds were four times more likely to die during birth or pregnancy than white women. It’s hoped the app will help to increase understanding and reduce race-related health inequalities.

Ruby’s idea won a global digital health competition run by Amazon Web Services Healthcare, Cogniss and The Validitron and will now launch a pilot of the app.

Find out more about the project.