Apple's remarkable achievements in the healthcare space are well known. The company has been able to integrate some useful features into the Apple Watch that have saved some people's lives. But the company also appears to be working on technology that could allow the iPhone to detect depression, anxiety and more, according to a new report.
A new Wall Street Journal report According to WSJ, Apple believes an iPhone could detect depression, anxiety and cognitive decline using a range of digital cues. The health data used would include physical activity and sleep patterns. The WSJ report states:
iPhone could detect depression: data protection and privacy are preserved
Apple Inc. is working on technology to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline, which the company could use to expand its growing healthcare portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter and documents seen by The Wall Street Journal. The data that could be used includes analyzing participants' facial expressions, the way they speak, the pace and frequency of their walks, their sleep patterns, and their heart and breathing rates. The speed of typing, the frequency of typos, and the content of what is written could also be measured, according to people familiar with the research and documents.
The detection of such diseases logically requires a high level of data that must be tracked and analyzed. In order to preserve data protection and offer maximum privacy, this data should be processed locally on the device. Communication with Apple's server is therefore not part of the plan. The WSJ writes:
The effort follows research partnerships Apple announced with the University of California, Los Angeles, which studies stress, anxiety and depression, and pharmaceutical company Biogen, which studies mild cognitive impairment. "Seabreeze" is Apple's code name for the UCLA project and "Pi" is the code name for the Biogen project, the people and documents said. The extent to which tracking users might be necessary could raise privacy concerns. To address those, Apple is aiming for algorithms that operate on users' devices and do not send the data to Apple's servers, the documents show.
Employees are optimistic
The UCLA study will collect data from 3,000 volunteers starting this year, while the Biogen study hopes to recruit around 20,000 participants over the next two years, about half of whom will have risk factors for cognitive impairment. Mild cognitive impairment can be an early sign of Alzheimer's, by the way. The article stresses that this work is still in a very early stage and may not lead to anything. It is known that depression, for example, leads to different patterns of smartphone use, but the challenge is to develop algorithms that are reliable enough to accurately diagnose certain diseases. According to insiders, however, those responsible are quite optimistic. (Photo by Aliaksei Pliutsinski / Bigstockphoto)
