Using a variety of metrics and user health data, iPhones can detect depression, anxiety, cognitive decline and, among the youngest, early symptoms of autism.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Apple is working on a technology that it will help diagnose depression, cognitive decline, but also anxiety and autism. To protect privacy, Apple aims to do all the diagnostic work on the device, without sending data to its servers.
Data that can be used for this purpose includes front camera analysis of facial expressions, the way patients speak, the pace and frequency of their walks, sleep parameters, and heart and respiratory rates. IPhones can also measure the speed of typing, the frequency of typos, the content of what patients type, and other data.
As for autism and the discovery of early symptoms, iPhones track a child’s face and observe different facial behaviors, such as how often the child looks away and other parameters possibly related to this situation.
The research, launched together with the University of California, is bearing fruit and could soon be expanded to other patients, before the official launch. As stated earlier, all data would be stored on the device without any sharing with Apple’s servers.
The study is still at an early stage and it is not certain that the results will lead to satisfactory results, such as to allow Apple to activate these monitors within the Health app. The challenge is to create sufficiently reliable algorithms to accurately diagnose specific conditions.
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