Verily and LivaNova accelerate efforts to detect and treat depression

__ Heads-up about a couple fascinating developments over the last few weeks. 1) Verily’s Bold New Project Aims to Predict Depression Using Your Phone (SingularityHub): “Depression is a shifting, amorphous beast that silently haunts millions. It’s also difficult to pinpoint. Psychiatry has formulated well-tested questionnaires to diagnose depression. But these tests require patients to reach out and only provide snapshots of their disorder in time … To Silicon Valley, the answer to solving depression is data. After all, most anti-depressant trials only recruit up to thousands of people. With digital health, anyone with a wrist wearable or smartphone could potentially contribute in the largest studies ever attempted by mankind. And if depressive symptoms correlate in any way to a “digital finger print”—how someone physically interacts with their smartphone, for example—these massive studies, combined with AI and sheer computing power, have the ability to find out. The vision isn’t fantasy. Last month, Google’s former healthcare division, Verily, announced a new study seeking participants to help transform your smartphone into a mood predictor. The initiative is part of Verily’s Project Baseline, which aims to construct a “Google Earth”-esque birds-eye view of human biology in health and disease. If all goes as planned, the Mood Study could uncover “more objective measures of depression” using smartphone data from thousands of people alone.” 2) Li...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness Technology -google Alphabet anti-depressants depression digital finger print digital health LivaNova mood predictor psychiatry questionnaires Silicon-Valley smartphone Verily Source Type: blogs