According to the World Health Organization, mental illnesses affect one in four people. It shows how serious the problem is and anyone can fall prey to psychological problems like depression or anxiety.
This is why a startup named Mindstrong Health from Palo Alto, California is trying to help people find out about their conditions in the most ingenious way — through a smartphone app!
No matter who we are or where we are, one common thing among people is smartphones. And it can be used to keep an eye on people’s cognition and emotional health by analyzing usage of the phone.
On installing the Mindstrong’s app, the user interaction with a phone is monitored through typing speed, taps, and scrolls while using other apps and this pattern is analyzed.
For example, memory problems can be related to how rapidly you type, what kind of errors you make while typing, how frequently you delete characters, and scrolling speed.
But first of all, Mindstrong determines your baseline behavior by learning how you use your handset and combines various parameters to form general characteristics.
To ensure that the collected data remains safe, it is encrypted and analyzed remotely through machine learning algorithms. The final results and analysis are then shared with the patients and their medical provider.
Mindstrong has already run trials of the app in controlled clinical settings. Now the app is available on both iOS and Android.
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