Interview with Rose Nakasi: using machine learning and smartphones to help diagnose malaria

Rose Nakasi and her colleagues have developed a machine-learning method to detect malaria parasites in blood samples. We spoke to Rose about the motivation for this project, the progress so far, and what they are planning next. The problem that we are trying to solve concerns the microscopy of malaria diagnosis. The motivation for this research is that malaria is one of the most highly endemic diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda included. The major problem is that the gold-standard confirmatory test for diagnosis is by use of a microscope, and in our setting, we have a shortage of skilled lab microscopists that are able to carry out the correct diagnosis of the disease.