Your iPhone could potentially become a blood pressure measuring tool and need nothing but a selfie video to make it happen.
Currently, getting blood pressure readings on the iPhone requires a gadget, but a breakthrough concept by Quartz has revealed that it’s possible to take a blood pressure reading of up to 95% accuracy without the need for special equipment.
Researchers at Hangzhou Normal University and Toronto University are working on an app that could detect blood pressure via transdermal optical imaging, a light mechanism that uses the iPhone’s camera to bounce protein from the skin, including hemoglobin. A machine-learning algorithm then reads the blood pressure that’s 95% accurate.
The only catch is, this technology only works on certain skin colors. The team says that over 95 percent of those who participated were either European or East Asian. Furthermore, the group states that the sample wasn’t deliberate and they were recruiting samples from nearby universities.
There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done, but overall we’re looking to a world where we can use our smartphones to measure the most important health markers.
