Mining Your Smartphone for Health Data
By Singer, Emily; Technology Review,Publication Date: June 21, 2011
Article features a software application that uses data collected automatically from mobile phones to warn users and their physicians of impending illness. The DailyData app analyzes information on the user’s location and the frequency of calls and text messages to determine whether the individual is having a health problem. Call diversity is an example of behavior that can be used to flag changes in mood, as people falling into a cycle of depression tend to go into isolation and stop contacting others. For patients with bipolar disorder, a burst of text messaging or phone calls could signal a manic episode. The app has been developed by Ginger.io, a new company started by scientists from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The DailyData app is unique in that it collects data automatically. It first creates a baseline model of a user’s mobile phone activity and then searches for deviations from that pattern. When the app detects behavioral changes, it sends out alerts to the user. The automatically collected data can be supplemented with manually entered information on medication, symptoms, and social activity, and users can look at visualizations of their data on their phone or on a website. Although the initial release of DailyData gives only user access to this data, eventually alerts could go to family members or caregivers.
Published by: Technology Review, Inc. (Website:http://www.technologyreview.com)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Web Site: http://www.mit.edu )
Link to text: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37866/?nlid=4625
