App helps with medical diagnosis, but is still in development

But using smartphones as diagnostic tools is still a work in progress. Physicians and their patients are achieving real-world success, but experts say their full potential is still unrealized and uncertain.

Smartphones have sensors that can monitor a patient’s vital signs. Some early application uses, such as concussion assessment, atrial fibrillation monitoring, and performing mental health wellness checks, can be mentioned.

Enthusiastic companies and researchers take advantage of mobile phones’ built-in cameras and light sensors. a microphone; an accelerometer that detects body movements; gyroscope; and even speakers. The app then uses artificial intelligence software to analyze the collected sights and sounds to easily connect patients and doctors. There will be over 350,000 digital health products available in app stores in 2021, according to a report by Grand View Research.

said Andrew Gostine, physician and CEO of sensor network company Artisight. According to the Pew Research Center, most Americans own a smartphone, and more than 60% of those over the age of 65 own a smartphone. The pandemic has made people more comfortable with virtual care.

Some manufacturers of these products have asked the Food and Drug Administration for permission to market them as medical devices. Others have been removed from the regulatory process and placed in the same clinical classification as Band-Aids. However, how government agencies treat AI and machine learning-based medical devices is still being adjusted to reflect the adaptability of software.

Ensuring accuracy and clinical validation is essential to obtaining consent from healthcare providers. And many tools still need fine-tuning, says his Eugene Yang, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Washington.

These new technologies rely on algorithms built through machine learning and artificial intelligence to collect data rather than the physical tools typically used in hospitals, making decisions difficult. So researchers can’t “compare apples” to medical industry standards, Yang said. Failure to incorporate such guarantees, he added, could undermine the technology’s goals of easing cost and access, as doctors would have to validate the results.

Large technology companies such as Google are investing heavily in this space, serving clinicians, home caregivers, and consumers. Google Fit app users can now see their heart rate by placing their finger on the rear camera lens, and track their breathing rate using the front camera.

Our research uses machine learning and computer vision, areas within AI that rely on information from visual inputs such as videos and images. So, instead of using a blood pressure cuff, for example, algorithms could interpret subtle visual changes in the body and make them act as proxies for blood pressure and biosignals, says Google’s director of health technology, electrical and computer. said his Shwetak Patel, a professor of engineering. at the University of Washington.

According to information released by the company in 2022, Google is also investigating the effectiveness of built-in microphones in smartphones to detect heartbeats and noise, and use cameras to screen for diabetic eye disease to preserve vision. I’m here.

The company recently acquired Sound Life Sciences, a Seattle startup that offers FDA-cleared sonar technology apps. It uses the smart device’s speaker to bounce off inaudible pulses from the patient’s body, identify movement, and monitor breathing.

Israel-based Binah.ai also uses smartphone cameras to calculate vital signs. The software studies the area around the eye and analyzes the light reflected from the blood vessels onto the lens, said company spokeswoman Mona Popilian-Yona.

Applications also apply to areas such as optometry and mental health.

• Using a microphone, Canary Speech uses the same underlying technology as Amazon’s Alexa to analyze a patient’s voice for mental health. The company’s CEO, Henry O’Connell, said the software would integrate with telemedicine appointments, allowing clinicians to screen for anxiety and depression using voice biomarkers and a library of predictive analytics. says it can.
• Australia-based ResApp Health has received FDA clearance in 2022 for an iPhone app that will screen for moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea by listening to your breath and snoring. SleepCheckRx, which requires a prescription, is minimally invasive compared to sleep studies currently used to diagnose sleep apnea.
• Brightlamp’s Reflex app is a clinical decision support tool to help manage concussion and vision recovery, among other things. The mobile app uses the iPad or iPhone’s camera to measure how a person’s pupils respond to changes in light. Through machine learning analysis, images provide doctors with data points to evaluate patients. Brightlamp is sold directly to healthcare providers and is used in over 230 clinics. The clinician pays a standard annual fee of $400 for each account he pays, which is not covered by insurance. The Department of Defense has ongoing clinical trials with Reflex.

For things like the Reflex app, data is processed directly on the phone rather than in the cloud, according to Brightlamp CEO Kurtis Sluss. By handling everything on the device, the app avoids encountering privacy issues. Patient consent is required to stream data elsewhere.

But algorithms need to be trained and tested by collecting large amounts of data, and it’s an ongoing process.

For example, researchers have found that some computer vision applications, such as heart rate and blood pressure monitoring, can be less accurate on darker skin tones. Research is ongoing to find better solutions.

“We are not there yet,” Yang said. “That’s the conclusion.”

This article is Kaiser Health News, A program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides information on health issues to the public.