One of the things we love to see is amazing medical and health applications of the Raspberry Pi. In our experience, they’re usually some of the most impressive displays that we see at Maker Faires, Coolest Projects, and other events where folks are showing off amazing projects. Here are ten of the best to inspire you.

This article first appeared in The MagPi 82 and was written by Rob Zwetsloot

BOINC

Lending spare CPU cycles to help cure diseases? Not as crazy as you might think: BOINC has been around for ages, and uses your idle CPU to help fold proteins or solve equations that can one day result in cures and treatments.

Website: BOINC

Patient monitor

This project uses the HealthyPi, a HAT for the Raspberry Pi that is specifically for medical applications. With it, you can create a full ECG which can measure heart rate, SpO2, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure.

Website: Build guide on Hackster

Heartfelt

Preventative care can save the NHS a lot of money, and the Heartfelt monitor is able to detect the symptoms of an oncoming cardiovascular event from the feet of at-risk patients. When an issue is detected, a carer is notified, and a quick doctor’s visit and medicine will mean the patient avoids a trip to the hospital.

Website: Heartfelt Technologies

LiV Pi

Air quality is a big deal in Hong Kong, and this Pi-compatible device lets you know just how clean your air is. It’s aimed towards businesses, but it’s also very useful at home if you’re living in the big city and have concerns over air pollution.

Website: Liv Pi

MRI analysis

A very early but excellent Pi project, where a research scientist turned his Pi into an MRI analysis computer. The key trick to getting this to work was hardware-accelerated calculations, as it wouldn’t be as well optimised in software.

website: Knight Errant of Science

Artificial Pi Pancreas

A DIY solution to a normal continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that helped Dana Lewis perfectly control her insulin injections thanks to a bit of machine learning. The Pi itself controls the insulin pump using the data from the CGM.

Website: DIYPS

Gastric cancer screening device

Not every part of medicine is glamorous. However, like this screening device, it can still save lives. The idea is that it’s very cheap and can be used in poor countries where the incidence of gastric adenocarcinoma is high.

Website: Raspberry Pi Projects

Heartbeat monitor

This project pairs the Pi with Bluetooth heartbeat sensors that are popular with gym equipment, enabling you to get more useful stats from a workout than your usual treadmill display. Daniel here has made data analysis very flexible with the code.

Website: GitHub repo

Open-source syringe pump

A usually expensive piece of equipment that allows for timed, precise doses of drugs or chemicals from a syringe – whether for a patient with an IV, or a scientist running a long-term experiment. This version, powered by a Pi, is much cheaper.

Website: Arropedia

NuGenius

This is an incredibly fancy piece of medical tech – a DNA imager that uses a Raspberry Pi. It’s quick, has modern tech conveniences such as a touchscreen, and is an
all-in-one device.

Website: Syngene