Brainworks uses a smartphone camera and artificial intelligence to detect your heart rate, your breathing

Brainworks combines artificial intelligence and simple smartphone camera images to automatically detect a person's heart or breathing rhythm.

And this is just one of the things the Emeryville, California-based company is pursuing in its overall goal of using smart ambient biometric sensors to improve healthcare. Phillip Alvelda, CEO of Brainworks, spoke at our VB Transform AI event on Thursday, and introduced the technology in real time, on stage and in an interview.

He said that health care should be more preventive than reactive. The technology of the company is contactless and works continuously. It only works if users have opted for constant monitoring, which, unlike many medical devices, is totally non-invasive.

This is important for monitoring the heart rate of a premature baby, whose skin is so sensitive that stains and wires badociated with monitoring vital signs can be harmful. By using a camera to detect minute changes in skin color and movement, Brainworks can provide equally good detection and compliance with measurement standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said Alvelda.

"We know where the face is, get a pulse rate and a heart rate history in real time," he said. "We see if they are consenting patients. Once we have captured a measurement every five seconds, we evaluate the accuracy of the measurement and whether it is a good vital sign based on the FDA registration requirements. "

The camera's sensors can also work remotely so that they can follow patients who do not want or can not go to the doctor. And it's more sanitary. Alvelda said that the transfer of messy hospital equipment can often be the cause of deadly infections by MRSA (staphylococcus). This is all the more reason to use a camera rather than equipment that comes into contact with the patient's skin.

Alvelda said his company had seven full-time employees and several consultants. They have a lot of experience in the intersection of AI and biology. Alveda has been involved in artificial intelligence for decades and has founded companies such as TaDa Innovations, MobiTV and Idetic. He was program director for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he helped fund in-depth research at the intersection of engineering and biology. He gained much of his technical knowledge during the early years of building sensor systems at NASA.

After observing much of the AI ​​landscape through his work at DARPA's Office of Biological Technologies, Alvelda returned to the private sphere and launched Brainworks in 2017. The Company's Service was subjected to field validation testing in August, then he will apply for regulatory approval medical use.

"At DARPA, we learned a lot about what the brain really does, which has rewritten a lot of neuroscience," he said. "We said we could use machine learning to build the missing parts of the brain around the technologies we already have."

The goal is to use AI to create reliable ways to detect and interpret the health status of each. This can be done with just about any smartphone camera, but Alvelda said the company would take advantage of advanced technology, such as Apple Watch sensors, as soon as it will be available. Artificial intelligence is what helps the company sort the data to get reliable and accurate information about minor changes in skin tone and movements. When your heart beats, there is an impulse of change that occurs in your body, and Brainworks detects it.

"With your heart rate, it basically changes your skin," he says. "It changes the color of your skin and it becomes redder and less green."

Precision matters. If it detects that the measurement is accurate, the sensors will capture a few seconds of your heart rate. It will do it again later, and every time you connect with your face. You simply point the camera at yourself, as if taking a selfie, and it captures the pulse and breathing rate in real time. Then, it can store this data, as long as you have a subscription. If he does not recognize you as someone who has logged in and has subscribed to the terms of service, he will not store your data in real time.

Alvelda said it was important because he was aware that camera technology could be used to spy on people and capture their data without permission. His company respects ethical standards and will not do business with people who do not use it for ethical business ideas, he said.

Alvelda said the company had more than 30 patent applications on different AI technologies and neuroscience. Over time, he said the company would be able to add more measures of vital signs, such as blood pressure. When this happens, Brainworks will be able to add more predictive services that could warn people of impending health risks.

"The trifecta is heart rate, breathing and blood pressure – and temperature in fourth," said Alvelda. "Then you can get a workable diagnosis. You can imagine trying to resolve movement disorders such as Parkinson's or ALS. "

He added that contactless health monitoring will allow health professionals to diagnose conditions from biometric data that might not show up during a clinic visit. By dramatically increasing the visibility on heart rate activity, intermittent medical symptoms may appear, resulting in life-saving diagnosis and treatment.

The company works with several partners such as Johns Hopkins Medince and Medstar.

Ultimately, the system could also be applied to education, financial technologies, smart cities, transportation and various other markets.

"We are focusing on health care because we do not want to try to boil the ocean," Alvelda said.

Rivals include other companies that are trying to connect neuroscience to computer applications such as Numenta.

Alvelda said that a number of parties have suggested that the company goes into other areas where the use of cameras is more summary.

"You have to build the system so that it is designed to work ethically, and make sure that you can only manage the tasks of the people with whom they have given you consent," he said. declared. "Our society has a strong vision of working for human benefit and social good."