Tech giant Google is working on new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that could enable users to use their smartphones as medical diagnostic tools.
Unveiling the new research projects at Google Health’s annual ‘The Check up’ event last week, the company’s head of health AI, Greg Corrado said that the new AI will turn smartphones into potential stethoscopes and other at-home disease screening tools. Google Health had previously introduced medical AI that could analyse photos of an eye’s interior to screen for diabetic retinopathy or certain cardiovascular risk factors like blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
And with this new project, researchers will aim to develop AI that could potentially identify the signs of illness – diabetes-related or otherwise – by using the external photos of the eye taken on smartphone cameras.
The new AI could help the patients be alerted about any potential illness through diagnosis from the comfort of their own homes.
The Check-Up event also saw the introduction of another AI project aimed at using a mobile phone’s built-in microphone to analyse the heart and lungs sound of the patient by placing it over the chest. The project is in the early stage of clinical testing with a focus on developing algorithms that could detect heartbeats and murmurs.
Corrado said in a blog post that the technology could help in the detection of major heart valve disorders like aortic stenosis without using costly equipment that are currently required for the diagnosis. The AI uses the Google Fit app’s feature that assesses a selfie video of a user’s head and upper torso to check their heart and respiratory rate.
The launch of these projects from Google comes after the debut of the company’s Derm Assist app in the European market last year. The CE marked mobile app used AI to three photos of a skin, hair or nail concern and the answers to a self-reported survey to provide a list of possible conditions.
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