Scanning for Health: New Device Determines your Health

A $280 scanner developed by German scientists analyzes your skin to determine how healthy you are. The device reflects a beam of light against the skin and analyzes anti-oxidant levels . This will produce a health reading on scale of 1-10. According to the team, ani-oxidant levels are “affected by stress, smoking, alcohol drinking, unhealthy food, lack of sleep and UV radiation.”

It is low priced in hopes of getting “normal” people to keep up with their overall health and improve for the better. Seeing a simple 1-10 score is a good way to do this. It requires minimal thought and you can easily see a change. I would make this into more of a game, however; Allow it to track your score, have it based on 100 (allows for more latitude for improvement), and, of course, post those scores to Facebook and Twitter to compete with friends. For those who are already health-conscience it would be fun to get into contests and beat scores. For those who aren’t, it may be enough to motivate them to get into action.

Now that this style technology has been developed, I expect to see more interesting applications of it. This unit is doing a final test in Europe and should be for sale soon.

Read more at Gizmodo.