Recently, Apple has been participating in several studies to study the potential of its products in the field of health., or to work on future functionalities that can be transferred to some of its wearable.

So today we are talking about a Research on the iPhone and its ability to detect certain conditions such as depression, anxiety and cognitive decline. This study has been done by the biotech firm biogen, but also Apple and UCLA. It also has two different code names, « exemplary » before and « sea ​​breeze » in Cupertino.

It’s about finding a Many clues to aid in diagnosis, especially from physical activity and sleep habits, but not only. But other data would have been used such as analysis of participants’ facial expressions, the way they spoke, their walking speed and frequency, sleep patterns, and heart and respiratory rates. this was also the question « Measure typing speed, the frequency of their typos, and the content of what they type, among other data points, according to people familiar with the research and documents ».

The study will track data from 3,000 volunteers on behalf of UCLA starting this year, while Biogen will recruit about 20,000 people to participate over the next two years. For the purposes of the study, about half of these people There will be risk factors for cognitive impairment.

Apple’s senior executives are clearly very optimistic Even though the project is still in its initial stage. Jeff Williams, the COO who oversees Apple’s health department, spoke enthusiastically to the firm’s employees, pointing to Benefit in the fight against depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, the rate of which would have been increasing greatly since the pandemic.