Communications of the ACM
Does Your Phone Know If You're Sick?
Notre Dame University professor Kevin W. Bowyer anticipates significant progress over the next two years toward building facial-recognition software into smartphones to assess the user's physical and mental health status.
Credit: medicaldaily.com
In an interview, Notre Dame University professor Kevin W. Bowyer suggests within the next two years there will be significant progress made incorporating facial-recognition software into smartphones to assess a person's physical and mental wellness.
However, he also warns this has the potential to raise controversial ethical and privacy issues.
"There are groups...monitoring your psychological well-being as well as your physical well-being from the time sequence of face images," Bowyer says. "You might also get the person's pulse rate, or their respiration rate, from a face video."
Although Bowyer sees such data being of use to health authorities, the question remains as to whether people will be willing to have this data disclosed to such entities. "We're potentially crossing a line when you begin to report semi-anonymous health information to another party," he notes.
From Deutsche Welle (Germany)
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