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New Startup By a Trio of Doctors Uses Phone App To Collect Measures of People's Cognition and Emotional Health and Attempts To Detect Signs of Depression (technologyreview.com)
A startup founded in Palo Alto, California, by a trio of doctors, including the former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is trying to prove that our obsession with the technology in our pockets can help treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. MIT Technology Review: Mindstrong Health is using a smartphone app to collect measures of people's cognition and emotional health as indicated by how they use their phones. Once a patient installs Mindstrong's app, it monitors things like the way the person types, taps, and scrolls while using other apps. This data is encrypted and analyzed remotely using machine learning, and the results are shared with the patient and the patient's medical provider.
The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong's research -- revealing, for example, a relapse of depression. With details gleaned from the app, Mindstrong says, a patient's doctor or other care manager gets an alert when something may be amiss and can then check in with the patient by sending a message through the app (patients, too, can use it to message their care provider).
The seemingly mundane minutiae of how you interact with your phone offers surprisingly important clues to your mental health, according to Mindstrong's research -- revealing, for example, a relapse of depression. With details gleaned from the app, Mindstrong says, a patient's doctor or other care manager gets an alert when something may be amiss and can then check in with the patient by sending a message through the app (patients, too, can use it to message their care provider).
Or is it that we are depressed because of the technology in our pocket?
Whole generations now spend all their free moments staring vacuously at a 4 inch wide screen scrolling to the next Facebook post rather than engaging in fulfilling personal and interpersonal interactions which yield meaningful real world accomplishments.
How soon until a bureaucrat uses this data to determine that you shouldn't be permitted to own a firearm or are not fit to be a parent.
Just what depressives need, a disconnected app experience. People need to get used to the idea an app isn't the be all and end all of solutions to problems. Seems like a cover to slurp up data if you ask me, not that anyone did.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
***ATTENTION***
The app has diagnosed you with drepression
Would you like to view some pretty pictures or be told to go for a walk?
[FLOWERS AND SHIT] [GET THE FUCK OVER IT]
Something like that anyway.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
And I have invented a machine that can diagnose illnesses based on a drop of blood. Doctors are trying to jump on the VC bandwagon.
Bought a dual SIM phone.
Have gnu, will travel.
The way I imagine the app working is that it pokes at you more and more with questions until the point you throw the phone, at which point it uses force measurement to determine level of anger.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Especially if the data is not anonymized. Given the tricks that data criminals can use, the size, frequency and IP addresses of the messages might tell a lot without even trying to decrypt the message. And if they can decrypt it, oh boy...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Maybe they could co-brand with Kleenex?
"I see your depression score is above 21, click here to order a box of tissue."
-Styopa
"treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: "
'Intractable' literally means 'untreatable'.
I use my phone mostly for email during the day (can't access at work) and leave it sitting when I get home. I have a tablet that I use for reading, surfing, and apps.
Will they see my complete lack of phone use for most of the day as a sign of depression? Do they consider me out of contact with people when I'm doing that on a device they're not monitoring?
As with so many things these days it's a case of "Technology can take the place of real people and make assumptions based on the data we expect".
Needless to say I'm not downloading the app. And if it gets added to my carrier's bloatware it's going to be the last straw that makes me root my phone.
This will be abandoned when they find out that people being treated like slaves by the .01% causes depression. Since 99.9% are slaves, there is no point in finding out who is depressed, just pass the Soma out to everyone.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
China's well on their way:
https://www.businessinsider.co...
And they've re-instated re-education camps:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10...
Here in the West, though, it'll be packaged up as a "depression detector". Or maybe there will be achievements for wearing it for X hours. Who knows. Regardless, the level of intrusion into not only lives, but very mind and soul itself, should bother us all.
Check your premises.
Treatment is the quite difficult and expensive part of the equation. I note that the app does nothing to treat the symptoms of what it detects, but instead gives other "professionals" increased opportunity to profit from it.
What problem does this app solve, again?
In which the government tracks the psychological states of the people, and blows them up for being too unhealthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...