New App Uses Space Station Technology to Bring Easy Water Testing to All

Scientists have created a new app based in part on International Space Station technology that, they say, is capable of testing water quality without costly lab equipment.

Called mWater, the app is used by testing the water, letting it incubate and then photographing the results in order to count the bacteria before finally uploading the results to a cloud-based water database. The phone's GPS identifies the exact location of the water source, which are each assigned a unique and permanent numeric identifier.

"The lessons I learned from writing crew procedures definitely influenced the design of the app, which is task-oriented and designed to require very little training beyond following the procedure," said John Feighery, a former lead engineer for air and water monitoring for NASA and mWater's co-founder.

According to NASA, mWater represents a powerful tool for governments, health workers and the general public; during the first year of the beta release of the app, over 1,000 users were able to map several thousand water sources.

"The key innovation that came from NASA was proving that these types of tests can still work at near ambient temperatures," Feighery said, explaining that studies have shown that any temperature above 25 degrees Celsius will produce a result, compared to traditional lab procedures, which require incubation at 37 degrees Celsius.

"This is very important for developing countries because incubators are expensive and require reliable electricity, and also can easily break down," the researcher said. "Since many of the countries that suffer from poor access to safe water are tropical, the tests can easily be done by anyone at room temperature most times of the year."

Another major advantage of the app is its mobility.

As Feighery found during his days volunteering with Engineers Without Border in El Salvador, transporting heavy, expensive equipment to test water sources is unrealistic in many cases. Besides being highly portable, mWater test supplies cost just $5 per kit.

Going forward, Feighery says he hopes to make the app even easier to use.

"In the near future, we plan to introduce checklists for each type of water test to further improve ease of use and reduce the training needed to perform field testing," he explained.