Abhay and Rani Bang, community health activists and founders of SEARCH (Society For Education, Action and Research In Community Health), a non-profit organization in India, have developed a tool to help illiterate trained birth attendants (TBAs) diagnose pneumonia in children. Diagnosing pneumonia is usually done by using a wrist watch to measure respiratory rate, but this was difficult for illiterate TBAs. In conjunction with training to improve TBAs' visual judgment, the abacus makes diagnosing pneumonia cheaper, simpler, and more effective. Preliminary studies show increases of accuracy from 60% to 82%. The results were published in the early 1990s!!!!!

Found in the Indian Journal of Pediatrics, Vol. 59 No. 1 (1992).