data predict depression

Feeling blue? Data on your iPhone can help diagnose depression.

In the future, data scientist Rosalind Picard hopes to be able to predict when a person is vulnerable to depression, even before the diagnosis manifests itself.

"We want to not only recognise, but also to try to predict," she tells Apple CEO Tim Cook during a meet-up at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One way of achieving this is artificial intelligence. Although critics often accuse Apple of lagging behind in this field - certainly in comparison to companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon - Cook claims that these possibilities are already well integrated into iPhones. Examples of artificial intelligence that could possibly predict depression in the future are: image recognition in photos, the detection of the kind of music being played via Apple Music (and linked to this: up-beat music as new suggestion), and the amount of smartphone use.