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Smartphone diagnostics will soon be a reality
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Medicine does not stand still, but keeps up with the times. There is a high probability that some medical professions will soon be replaced by gadgets that can diagnose diseases.
Today, there are already apps that can analyze subcutaneous fat, determine BMI, measure pulse and blood pressure. What can we expect in a few years?
Scientists claim that computer technologies will allow diagnostics to be carried out no worse than medical specialists: the main thing is to enter a sufficient amount of information into the program.
Experts from the Australian Macquarie University (Sydney) have proposed a facial recognition program to assess the health of more than 270 volunteers. The study turned out to be very interesting and successful. "We have come up with a program that can fully describe the patient's health based only on the analysis of his facial characteristics. This is further evidence that the human face can signal physiological and health characteristics of the body," explains the head of the experiment, Ian Stephen.
The project has received many positive reviews, but there are also many skeptical critics. Perhaps such an application is a step towards progressive diagnostics, eliminating human errors and mistakes. But it is also possible that this is just a cool mobile program. What did the scientists do? Professor Stephen and his colleagues used photographs of more than 270 patients of various nationalities. These photographs were set in the settings of a special computer program. Among the volunteers were representatives of Asia, Africa, and Europe.
At first, the scientists tried to use the new program to determine such indicators of the patients' health as blood pressure, body mass index, and percentage of subcutaneous fat in the body. The specialists liked the results of the program, and they continued their experiment. It was decided to compare the abilities of artificial intelligence and an ordinary person. The scientists made changes to the patients' appearance - some had a facelift, and others had makeup applied. In this way, the specialists hoped to "fool" the program. It turned out that the human brain functions almost the same way as the intelligence modeled on a computer. Both of them focus on the same health indicators, assessing a person's appearance and face.
"The results of the experiment indicate that the human brain, going through the stages of evolution, has developed special ways of processing data about the health of other people based on their appearance. Such a mechanism helps to single out sick subjects from the general crowd in order to build appropriate relationships - for example, to stay away from them," explains Professor Stephen. The scientists published the results of the project in the pages of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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