Posted on 09/25/2015 6:05:36 PM PDT by markomalley
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the “psychological status” of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.
The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.
The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can “deliver an automated intervention” if necessary.
“The NIH inventors have developed a mobile health technology to monitor and predict a user’s psychological status and to deliver an automated intervention when needed,” according to the notice published Wednesday. “The technology uses smartphones to monitor the user’s location and ask questions about psychological status throughout the day.”
“Continuously collected ambulatory psychological data are fused with data on location and responses to questions,” the NIH said. “The mobile data are combined with geospatial risk maps to quantify exposure to risk and predict a future psychological state. The future predictions are used to warn the user when he or she is at especially high risk of experiencing a negative event that might lead to an unwanted outcome (e.g., lapse to drug use in a recovering addict).”
The NIH said the technology has potential commercial applications for “real-time behavior monitoring” and “therapeutic delivery of an intervention via a mobile device.”
Researchers developed the system from a project that tracked the mood and cravings of drug users in Baltimore. The $8.9 million federal study sought to develop algorithms that could “automatically detect behavioral events (such as episodes of drug use or stress) without requiring self-report.”
The NIH said the app is currently being used for drug addiction interventions, but that the “inventors are also seeking to test the technology for other health applications.”
Request for comment from the NIH was not returned by press time.
Anything that can be used as a weapon will probably be used as a weapon and tyrants are always looking for the newest weapons that can be used against us. I a becoming very wary of many of these “friendly” high tech toys that we have today. I always look at ways that they can be used against us and I am sure that there are many control freaks in high places that are looking at them the same way.
Remember Janet Napolitano and her list of potential domestic terrorists...anyone who owns a gun, anyone who is pro-life, anyone who does not vote Democrat.
"Constitution"? Oh! You mean that piece of paper that none of the branches of government pays attention to anymore...
It’s the same part of the Constitution that authorizes a Kenyan Muslim to serve as President while his transvestite “wife” lives like a queen at taxpayer expense.
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