Apple Working On Software That Can Monitor Mental Health Using iPhone Data

While Apple’s products like the iPhone and Apple Watch come with health features, these are more related to physical health like how far you’ve run, how many calories you’ve burnt, and so on. It is a bit lacking when it comes to mental health, although Apple does include apps such as Breathe and Mindfulness.

However, sometimes we might be suffering from mental health issues without even knowing about it. For example, there are varying degrees of depression that some might just attribute to just having a bad day.

That being said, it seems that Apple could be working on making some of these issues easier to detect. A report from the Wall Street Journal (paywall) has revealed that Apple is apparently working on ways to detect mental health conditions using data from devices like the iPhones and Apple Watch. This will come in the form of monitoring sleep patterns, how people type, heart and respiration rates, and even facial expression analysis.

Apple is currently researching the effectiveness of this system and should it prove to be useful and effective, it could eventually become a feature in future Apple products. It is said that Apple’s efforts are still in the early stages and it could be a few years before we know the conclusion of the studies, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: Health, iPhone