When you open your cell phone app, you can get your heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, mental stress value and many other medical level health indicators. At the same time, these health indicators can also be imported into the medical AI to monitor your personal health at any time. If any abnormality occurs, the doctor can be notified at any time. And to realize all this, just need to open the phone, shoot a 30-second short video.
This crazy-sounding idea has already become a reality. Binah, an AI medical startup from Israel, is working on connecting AI systems to the cameras on cell phones and laptops. By monitoring things like blood alcohol levels and even glucose, cholesterol and hemoglobin levels, it can be informed about people's health.
"Anyone who wears a smartwatch knows about those blinking lights on the back of the watch that monitor tiny color changes in the skin. From there, they reflect the blood flow beneath the skin." Recently, on a program hosted by John Kooser and called TechFirst, Binah CEO David Maman talked about how the app works. Highlights from that interview have been compiled by the health community.
John Kozel: Please share a little bit about how it works
David Marman: If one pays attention, from wearables, there are blinking lights on the back of any smartwatch. These blinking lights actually emit infrared beams that monitor tiny color changes in the skin, which reflect the blood.
The technology, known as imaging volumetric tracing PPG, first began in 1938. Apple can analyze blood flow and monitor heart rate. fitbit can monitor oxygen saturation. Samsung can measure mental stress levels.
And we differ slightly from them in that what we do is not send a beam of light, but analyze the intensity of the light as it reflects off the cheek and into the camera lens. We can do this on smartphones, laptops, tablets, and even smart TVs. The app has been in production for over a year now, but our product is not for the general public; we are a B-side digital health solutions provider.
John Kozel: What are the requirements for the camera?
David Marman: It needs to be 30 frames per second. Of course, any webcam produced in the last 15 years has been 30 frames per second, so basically any iPhone 7 and higher, and any Android device in the last five years will work fine. We've got over 7 million devices running our technology worldwide.
John Cozier: Is there a skin color requirement?
David Marman: It works on any skin color. We've validated the technology over time in India, Nepal, Poland, Russia, etc., from extreme whites to dark colors; testers have spanned ages from 4-92. This product works for any age, the only condition is reasonable light conditions and then you get results.
John Cozier: Can you measure blood pressure?
David Marman: Currently, the ability to measure blood pressure is a feature that we have patented the technology for. Unlike other vital sign extractions, such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, and mental stress levels, which are purely signal processing capabilities, blood pressure is based on modeling.
To create the database, we worked with seven hospitals around the world. We needed to take invasive blood pressure measurements, or a cuff-based blood pressure measurement, and record the audio through our own recording application, and from that we built a database of nearly 13,000 people to build the right model. We produced 1,400 features using PPG signals. This is the core of this technology.
John Cozier: What's the actual experience like?
David Marman: Every metric is different. To get an accurate heart rate, we need 10 to 12 seconds; oxygen saturation 25 seconds; respiratory rate 32 seconds. Psychological stress level, which is the official Baevsky Stress Index, we can do in 45 to 50 seconds. The entire reading will take 55 to 60 seconds.
John Kozel: Other than that, what are the featured applications?
David Marman: Recently, we've been looking at how to measure hemoglobin levels to determine whether or not you're anemic. We're also looking at alcoholic blood levels and expect to release the first version by the end of this year. That's a great message for transportation companies to make sure truckers aren't drinking and driving, and to help riders know if an Uber driver is drinking and driving.
John Cozier: Everyone cares about health, and many people will collect data about their health through wearable devices, including heart rate, exercise levels and more. But it seems like we have a hard time communicating this health information to doctors, how do you address this?
David Marman: Yes, AppleWatch is checking the user's status every 20 seconds, which means there are thousands of readings. We're generating countless amounts of data. But according to World Health Organization data, there's going to be a shortfall of 15 million doctors globally over the next decade, which means we don't have enough doctors or trained professionals to navigate through all the data generated by wearables.
AI is a buzzword now. But all of the technological resources are designed to build personalized health profiles. But when a user goes to the doctor, it doesn't mean anything, even if the doctor gets vital signs. But this information will help insurance companies, healthcare providers and especially telemedicine providers to understand the status. All of us need remote patient monitoring, not just a meeting with the doctor every other quarter when we feel a cold.
John Kozel: What are some of your customers?
David Marman: Right now we have five insurance company customers around the world. For example, Sompo, the largest insurer in Japan is our partner. Whether it's health insurance or life insurance, insurers are talking about how to properly manage risk, and they all want to know the vital signs of their subscribers during underwriting so that they can add them to the actuarial system to determine what the risks are that are insuring you.
Suicide is a very big problem in Japan, and a big reason for their suicides stems from depression, and if you can measure mental stress levels, you can see how well a person is doing and if they are deteriorating into depression or something more serious. They released an app called Linkx that measures stress levels, heart rate variability and heart rate of all users to determine their risk for coverage.
Then again, there are telemedicine providers using our technology as well, so imagine the better treatment environment that could be created by being able to check your pulse, blood pressure, and other data at the same time as you're on a video call with your doctor.
As a final example, we've created a system called Back to Work, where everyone can scan themselves before they leave home in the morning and get immediate answers to questions like whether your oxygen saturation is below 92, your respiratory rate is above 30, etc., which could mean that you shouldn't go to work today, but should see a doctor instead. go to work and should instead see a doctor.