Free Beacon – by Elizabeth Harrington
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 usersin 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.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-developed-app-that-predicts-psychological-status-of-americans/
what is this?: “therapeutic delivery of an intervention via a mobile device”
This article, plus the one about lithium being sprayed over populations, plus biometric/GPS data and credit cards embedded with ID chips. Hmm.
Maybe it just rings the cops if it thinks you’re being bad and they then do the intervening?
Just another among thousands of reasons NOT to buy or use a smart phone!
“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.”
Since our (good) health is the LEAST of their concerns, one can’t help but wonder what those ‘other health applications’ might entail.
btw, whatever happened to NIMH? Seems like this would be their department.
It’s politically incorrect to use the word “mental” anymore as it may offend someone who’s “mental”. 😆
I finally rented that old Disney movie “The Secret of NIMH” a while back.
Interesting.
Once again, these are Commies who obviously have never seen “Minority Report” or refuse to believe it the moral of the story. Of course, what do you expect when Commies have no morals to begin with.