Indian-origin researchers have developed a new health sensing tool that can accurately measure lung function over a simple phone call made with any phone - from anywhere in the world.

The findings could be of special help for people in the developing world who have asthma, cystic fibrosis or other chronic lung diseases.

Know how well their lungs are functioning without visiting a doctor or a clinic.

Shwetak Patel of University of Washington said , "With SpiroCall, you can call a 1-800 number, blow into the phone and use the telephone network to test your lung function,".

The new new health sensing tool is called SpiroCall that can accurately measure lung function over a simple phone call.

The patients take a deep breath in and exhale as hard and fast as they can until they can’t exhale any more. The phone’s microphone senses sound and pressure from that exhalation and sends the data to a central server, which uses machine learning algorithms to convert the data into standard measurements of lung function.

SpiroCall transmits the collected audio using a standard phone channel — as opposed to a sound file that is transferred by a smartphone app over the Internet. Now ,multiple regression algorithms combined by team to provide reliable lung function estimates despite the degraded audio quality.

The team also developed a 3D printed whistle that can be used in conjunction with SpiroCall that changes pitch when the patient exhales.