Israeli company can check heart rate with smartphone camera
Binah.ai can capture vital signs through the camera of a smartphone, tablet or laptop in under a minute.
Binah.ai's system can work on a phone, tablet or laptop. (photo credit: BINAH.AI)
Vital signs offer medical professionals the first indication of
unsound health.
Measuring them can assess a person’s well-being, hint if
there is an underlying disease, and determine if a treatment is
effective.
Israel’s
Binah.ai can capture and extract a person’s vital signs ranging from
heart rate, heart rate variability, oxygen saturation and more through
the camera of a smartphone, tablet or laptop – all in under a minute.
The company’s Health Data Platform is powered by artificial intelligence
and is a software-only solution, meaning it requires no additional
wearable device or other dedicated hardware. The results are delivered
to the user in a simple and accessible digital format.
“We want to make the world a healthier place,” said the company’s founder and CEO David Maman.
Binah.ai
was founded in 2017. At the time, according to the World Health
Organization, as much as 60% of humanity did not have access to the
medical services it needed.
Binah.ai captures vital signs in under a minute through a camera (credit: BINAH.AI)
Maman
said that today, most Western countries, including Israel, have around
three doctors for every 1,000 people. But in some countries, including
many in the Middle East, there is only one physician for every 10,000
people. And in others, like in parts of Africa, there is just one for
every 30,000 people.
“Population
growth is amazing,” Maman said. “And being a physician is not easy.
Smart people opt to make their money in hi-tech and fewer and fewer
people are going into medicine, which involves years of training and can
be an extremely hard profession unless they truly have a calling.”
But
while countries might be lacking available doctors, even in most of the
world’s greatly under-served countries, people often own smartphones.
Founder and CEO of Binah.ai, David Maman (credit: BINAH.AI)
Binah.ai, Maman explained, transforms these phones into medical devices through its software.
The system operates using remote photoplethysmography (rPPG).
PPG
(without the r) is an uncomplicated and inexpensive optical measurement
method that was first mentioned as far back as the late 1930s. RPPG, on
the other hand, is “a camera-based solution for contact-less
cardiovascular monitoring, proven to be as accurate as traditional PPG
devices. Our technology measures the changes in red, green, and blue
light reflected from the skin and quantifies the contrast between
specular reflection and diffused reflection,” the company’s website
explains.
Binah.ai
does not have access to the user data. Rather, its technology is
embedded in its customers’ applications and the data is only sent to the
user or wherever the user chooses to make it available. For example, a
user could send the scans to his or her insurance company or physician,
“but it is up to the customers what to do with the data,” Maman
stressed.
The
company aims to make people healthier but is also using its device to
help company’s gauge the health of their clients. Already, its software
is being used by seven out of the top 100 insurance companies worldwide,
who ask their users to confirm their vital signs to help determine
client health and set premiums.
Maman
said 50 customers in total are using the technology, which offers eight
vital sign measurements to date. The goal is to offer as many as 25
vital signs in the long term.
Although
Binah.ai does not need Food and Drug Administration approval to sell
its software, the company does plan to submit it for FDA Class II
medical device approval by December, with the goal of receiving approval
for at least two vital signs by early next year, and the rest after
that. Maman said that having this approval will “dramatically increase
the credibility of the system.”
“Our goal is to make everything medical-grade,” he said.
In
the future, he could picture primary care physicians wanting access to
the software as an effective means of preventative medicine. An elevated
resting heart rate for a week can be a sign of increased mortality, for
example, and doctors could see this warning sign early and advise their
patients.
“It is not just about reading the vital signs, but what they mean,” Maman said.
He added that biotech is not just “the next big thing, but it is everything.”
Healthcare was neglected, he said, and the coronavirus crisis
brought the field back to the forefront with a vengeance. It also
pushed medical professionals to embrace telehealth and digital devices
in ways they had never done before.
Israel, he predicted, could be a leader in the arena.
“I expect the Israeli biotech market to triple in the next five years,” he said.
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