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Lack of affordable body composition analysis tools

💚 healthpersonal problemSingle report ●●●●● severity 3/5

A pharmacist in Egypt reports that professional body composition scales are too expensive for their pharmacy, leading them to attempt building a DIY version using Arduino, but they are unsure if the mathematical equations they are using to estimate body fat percentage are accurate or reliable.

Who's affected: A pharmacist in Egypt.

⚠️ Single report. This is one person's account. We mark it so until more voices confirm it.

What people do today

🔧 Fix this

Ideas a builder, maker or community group could start on:

  1. Develop an open-source, low-cost hardware kit for pharmacies that uses validated bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) sensors rather than just BMI-based math.
  2. Create a standardized, peer-reviewed software library for Arduino that implements clinically validated body composition algorithms for low-cost hardware.
  3. Build a community-verified database of calibration data comparing DIY scale outputs against professional medical-grade equipment to improve accuracy.
I want to build this

Real voices

“the cost of an in-body scale of a reputable brand are too high for our budget”

Source: Stack Exchange (fitness) · CC BY-SA 4.0, user-contributed content from Stack Exchange; summarized and modified

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