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Vital Signs Camera - Philips, an app from Philips (NYSE: PHG) Electronics, is available for 99 US cents at the App Store.
Until recently, it has never occurred to me to check my heart rate with my iPad 2. Sure, I know there are medical apps that doctors and nurses are using to store and move information around, but using the camera in the iPad 2 to check my heart rate? And breathing rate, too?
No way. Of course, I rarely check these vital signs anyway, and usually the only time I'm aware of them at all are when I'm sucking wind while playing basketball or hiking up some steep and rocky incline. Philips Electronics, it turns out, sort of has an app for that: Vital Signs Camera -- Philips.
How Does It Work?
The app uses the iPad 2's camera and processor to look at your face and chest area to determine your heartbeat and breathing rate. How? According to Philips, your heartbeat causes small changes in the color of your face. Not visible to the naked eye, the advanced software in the iPad 2 camera can detect them. Philips calls them "micro-blushes."
Nice. I'm micro-blushing all the time. Didn't know that.
As for the breathing rate, if Philips and the camera can see micro-blushes, noting the movement of a person's chest ought to be simple enough.
To get these measurements, you have to make sure the iPad 2 is totally stable, and that pretty much means you have to prop it up on a table. Then you need to see yourself on the screen as the camera sees you and frame your face in a little box. If you frame your face, your chest pretty much has to be in the right position, too. Tap a measure button, and a moving line graph on the left shows you your heart rate as it's being recorded while a line graph on the right shows you your breathing rate.
After 15 seconds or so, it gives you your average rates, though you can set the app to constantly display your vital signs on the fly.
Gaming the System
The obvious question is, how is the accuracy? It seems pretty accurate when you use it correctly. On a stable position (my desk) with a well-framed subject (me) in good light (my office, which has lousy light) it delivered seemingly accurate measurements time and time again. When I got up and busted out some pushups and jumping jacks (it's old school here) to boost my heart rate, then sat back down again and re-measured, sure enough, my heart rate and breathing rates rose accordingly. Testing the rates with a pulse and simple counting against a clock confirmed that Vital Signs Camera -- Philips is surprisingly accurate.
But it's also easy to trick the app. I tried measuring my heart rate while holding my breath. It measured my heart rate just fine, but the graph got all wacky as it tried to detect my non-breathing chest. Ultimately it gave me a breathing rate of 15 breaths per minute.
I also tried it while chewing gum. That move amped my recorded heart rate up by 30 percent or so (and also made the graphing line wig out).
Similarly, when I wore a bulky fleece jacket, the app under-recorded my breathing rate, no doubt because it couldn't fully detect my chest movement beneath the jacket. It works great with a t-shirt, though.
Since I don't wear makeup, I'm unsure how it will perform for anyone wearing that -- or for people with deep tans or naturally darker skin tones. All this micro-blush stuff is new to me.
Not for Medical Use
Philips is careful to point out pretty much everywhere it can that the app is not intended for medical use -- not diagnosis, clinical monitoring or decision making. In addition, Philips goes to great pains to point out that it, the company, does not record or track your data in any way.
You can share your results via Facebook, Twitter, or email, though, and Philips warns you that this is your business, and you should be aware of how this information could be stored, moved or passed around based on how and where you choose to share it. I doubt insurance companies are watching your moves on Facebook and dumping clients for posting abnormally high heart rates, but you get the point: This is personal medical data, even if the accuracy is unclear, so Philips seems to try to point that out without a bunch of scare tactics.
So what's the point of this app? I think Philips created it as a showcase app, a leadership app, as a tool to open our minds to the leaps and bounds that we're making with technology. Maybe the company wanted to sell it to millions of people and make millions of bucks, but somehow I don't think so. In fact, this very question got me poking around Philips' website and pages for the Vital Signs Camera app, where Philips reveals that it has been developing this camera technology for three years.
"Although the concept is simple, calculating multiple parameters, such as heart rate and breathing rate, from real time video images is a major technical challenge," Philips writes. "Philips has been able to overcome these challenges by using advanced algorithms and draws on its deep in-house expertise in optics, video and signal processing. Philips believes that this breakthrough innovation has wide market potential for Philips."
Right on. Thanks for sharing, Philips.
