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) 50
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.... (Score:1)
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.
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Consequences? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Consequences? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Or vote?
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"I believe you are 100% correct in that the DNC will shortly start asking elections to not happen because they can't be done "fairly""
Yet it was Trump saying that millions of Dem votes were cast by illegals and that Russia plans to help the Dems in the midterms
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"I believe you are 100% correct in that the DNC will shortly start asking elections to not happen because they can't be done "fairly""
Yet it was Trump saying that millions of Dem votes were cast by illegals and that Russia plans to help the Dems in the midterms
AC has apparently not paid much attention to history.
Republicans wnat as few people to vote as possible. Their ideological leader Rush Limbaught was not at all facetious when He said that "When women got the right to vot is when it all went downhill" Here is audio of that from 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Anyhow, disenfranchising more than half of the population is one of their goals.
Keeping chocolate people disenfranchise is childs play compared to what they will do if allowed. There ar
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You're thinking too small.
The profit will be in passing laws that require everyone to run the app, and people it flags as "depressed" legally required to buy antidepressants from your friendly pharma megaconglomerate.
China will pioneer forcing their population to use the app. From there it will spread to Europe and the USA.
For the public profit^h^h^h^h^h^hhealth, of course.
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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.
How long until they're right?
Obviously, I understand the concern here- and it is something to be concerned about... but what if the data could determine with 99.9% accuracy that someone wasn't fit to own a gun or be a parent...
I'm not proposing they use data for those purposes... but if the data could say accurately- would it be right to use it? (assuming no constitution violations- it gets updated as need be).
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The problem here is no matter how effective that kind of filtering would be, it would not be limited to only firearms or parenting. Once someone is determined to be unfit for anything, they will be blacklisted by employers. Just because someone may be unfit to be a parent doesn't mean they can't be a kick-ass employee, but employers (and more importantly insurance/liability) won't see it that way. At all. You will be blacklisted, and that will become the problem that dismantles the program altogether, putting us right back to square one.
If the data were used as a public social score like China already has in place, yes. I would suspect that any accurate algorithm of trustable gun owners would not be the same as any accurate algorithm of trustable parents... so we're already talking about 2 separate groups. Someone you can trust with a gun you can't necessarily trust with a child and vice versa.
I'm not proposing we legislate any of these social scores for allowing guns or children... the thought creeps me out- but I am proposing it just a
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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.
The question isn't whether the government will have the authority to deprive various liberties based on mental health status - it will - but where the boundaries of that are.
Presumably, this app would have the same status as a screening questionnaire - it could indicate that a closer look should be taken.
It also sounds like the intended use is with people who already have mental health concerns.
Can the information be abused? Sure. So can any information.
Hopefully due process will still be honored - hop
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When I said not fit to be a parent I was referring to the state taking children from parents.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/0... [reason.com]
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When I said not fit to be a parent I was referring to the state taking children from parents. https://reason.com/blog/2018/0... [reason.com]
As it should, if severe mental illness prevents safe parenting. For example, a schizophrenic who is too busy hiding from the CIA agents in his teeth to even take care of himself, much less any children.
Can such power be abused? Of course. As can any power that the state wields.
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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.
Just what depressives need (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure (Score:2)
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Multiple Personality Disorder (Score:5, Funny)
Bought a dual SIM phone.
Good use of accelerometer (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
good idea (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they could co-brand with Kleenex?
"I see your depression score is above 21, click here to order a box of tissue."
Funny (Score:3)
"treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: "
'Intractable' literally means 'untreatable'.
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"treat some of today's most intractable medical problems: "
'Intractable' literally means 'untreatable'.
No it does not. Intractable means "hard to deal with".
https://en.oxforddictionaries.... [oxforddictionaries.com]
Phone usage itself? (Score:1)
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 t
This will be abandoned (Score:2)
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.
Prototype thoughcrime detector (Score:2)
China's well on their way:
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
And they've re-instated re-education camps:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10... [cnn.com]
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.
Detection is not treatment (Score:2)
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?
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Sounds like an app to find new people to give medication to. Big Pharma has to keep making massive profits.
Funny, I just started watching Psycho-Pass. (Score:2)