Future iPhone could alert you on mental health!

Hyderabad: Apple, a prominent multinational tech company, is reportedly working on methods to help detect and diagnose conditions such as depression, anxiety and cognitive decline using in-house built iPhone. Researchers hope that analysis of data such as mobility, sleep patterns and how people type could spot behaviors associated with those conditions, says a report by The Wall Street Journal. Other measurements could include facial expression analysis and heart and respiration rates. All of the processing would take place on the device, with no data sent to Apple servers.

The company is working on research projects that could lead to the development of these features. The University of California, Los Angeles, is studying stress, anxiety and depression, with Apple Watch and iPhone data on 3,000 volunteers who are to be tracked in a study that starts this year. A pilot phase that began in 2020 which recorded data from 150 participants.

If data from the ­studies lines up with symptoms of depression or anxiety, The Californian giant could use it to create a feature that warns users if it sees signs of a mental health condition. The iPhone could prompt users to seek care, which could be important as early detection can improve quality of life in the long run.

With all these in place, another research project is underway that may factor into this Apple project. The company and pharmaceutical firm Biogen said in January they're working on a two-year study to monitor cognitive function and perhaps spot mild cognitive impairment, which has the potential to develop into Alzheimer's. The plan is to track around 20,000 participants, around half of whom have high risk of cognitive impairment.

The tech firm and its partners are in the early stages of this work, so it's likely to take few years at least before the company adds mental health monitoring features to the iPhone. However, there's no guarantee the research will lead to such features at all. Some previous studies have indicated people with certain conditions use devices differently than other folks.