Apple is always in the news for various reasons such as always working on newer features and tools to add to its massive health portfolio. A new report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), reports that Apple is working on a new technology to detect and diagnose depression and cognitive decline through an array of sensor data on the iPhone.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Apple is exploring opportunities to create algorithms that can detect depression and cognitive decline using iPhone sensor data such as mobility, physical activity, sleep patterns, typing behaviour and more. For this reason, Apple has enlisted the two research partners: the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Massachusetts-based multinational pharmaceutical company Biogen Inc.
Under the project codename “Seabreeze”, UCLA’s research covers signs of stress, anxiety and depression using data from the iPhone’s video camera, keyboard, and audio sensors as well as data from Apple Watch that relates to movement, sleep, and vital signs. These data could be broken down into how the user speaks, facial expressions, sleep pattern, typing speed, heart and perspiration rates as well as other health related metrics.
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These data are then compared with standard test measures for stress, anxiety, or depression by asking research participants about how they feel using questionnaires and examining the stress hormone cortisol in follicles of their hair. Apple is hoping to turn the research into an app or feature that could detect these target conditions similar to the irregular heart rhythm feature introduced on the Apple Watch (vis a vis the research carried out by Stanford University) and Walk Steadiness in iOS 15.
Under the other project, codenamed “Pi”, Biogen’s study covers mild cognitive impairment. The company recently got approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a new drug to treat mild cognitive impairment. Under the two-year research, Biogen will use iPhone and Apple Watch data to track the decline of cognitive function and develop a feature that detects the impairment early and suggest relevant actions to take.
Continuing its efforts to promote privacy, Apple intends for the associated algorithms to work on the user’s device and no data will be sent to Apple servers. Also, the report notes that the research is still in early stages and too early to tell if it will amount to anything.