Magic Mirror on the Wall, Do I Look Healthy in This Selfie?
/By Madora Pennington
What if gazing into your smartphone’s camera did more than make content for your Instagram? What if it could assess your health?
By analyzing the blood flow in your face, an app claims to do just that.
Your facial blood flow says a lot about you --- whether you are at rest, concentrating, happy or sad. And thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, it can also assess the state of your health.
The Anura MagicMirror uses transdermal optical imaging technology to gage cardiac and blood flow activity. It then processes this information to assess your overall health, as well as your risk of developing chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
The app, which can be downloaded on a smartphone, records the face for thirty seconds. The facial blood flow — imperceptible to the human eye — is then compared to AI models from tens of thousands of individuals. From this data, it churns out individual health feedback. While not as accurate as having a blood pressure cuff or blood test, Anura makes an educated guess about your health indicators.
How accurate is Anura?
“All measurements have been validated using medical grade devices and following established scientific research protocols. We have ten peer reviewed papers published in scientific journals detailing the methods and procedures used and the corresponding results,” says Marzio Pozzuoli, CEO of NuraLogix, which developed the Anura MagicMirror.
I downloaded a free version of the app – called Anura Lite -- and tried it for myself.
I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, so I have “invisible” health challenges that don’t easily fall under the gaze of this app.
Anura focuses on the main issues that affect everyone: heart health, metabolic health, and mental health — which are leading indicators for chronic conditions that can end in death: cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes and stroke.
The app collects data on 30 different health parameters, including your breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, vascular capacity, body mass index, facial skin age, waste-to-height ratio, body shape index, and mental stress index.
With this data, it then estimates the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and stroke over the next ten years.
The app also asked about my gender, age, weight and height, so I’m assuming it used this self-reported information to answer some of its questions about my health. Here are some of the scores the app gave my health and general wellness:
True, I don’t have a high BMI and am not overweight, so I’m not at high risk for metabolic disease. I already knew that.
I do have heart issues, but they are monitored and managed by my cardiologist -- successfully, it seems, if we believe Anura.
I felt relaxed when I used the app, and the MagicMirror reassuringly agreed.
One thing it got wrong was my skin age. It’s been a while since I was 31. I confess that to get my age lower, I put on makeup and laid on my back for the facial scan. I hope this didn’t affect the overall results. I am always risking my mental health when I focus the painfully high-definition iPhone camera on myself.
For metric junkies, Anura might be as fun as popping on the scale every morning or using a Fitbit.
The app doesn’t have a pain score, but for a patient with chronic pain or illness, it might be insightful to do a scan in times of physical or mental stress to see what, if anything, could be learned and addressed.
Currently, NeuroLogix is finding customers for its technology in the life insurance industry. Instead of accepting the assertions of an applicant at face value or requesting medical records and lab tests, an app like Anura could provide a health assessment more quickly – and cheaply — to the insurer.
It is easy to imagine a place for technology like this in telehealth, where a doctor has no opportunity to put a blood pressure cuff or pulse oximeter on a patient. Clinicians could then gather health data through a remote scan, improving the quality of remote telehealth appointments.
Telehealth is of enormous benefit to disabled people and the elderly, especially in rural areas without easy access to medical care or specialists. That is, if the technology proves reliable. For now, NeuroLogix admits its health assessments are “only estimates and are not a substitute for the judgment of the healthcare professional.”
But in the future, with more research, it might be possible to measure pain by using technology like this instead of relying on flawed methods like the pain scale. Pain is a subjective experience that currently has no objective and reliable way to measure, because it varies from person to person. MagicMirror may someday give us an alternative.
