Get ready for the future of automotive: cabins that act as occupants' private health clinics

Do you work in the automotive industry?

You may not have thought about this before, but as an automotive professional you are now suddenly in a position where you could contribute meaningfully to benefiting people’s health! Using existing technology to perform in-cabin sensing of medically relevant behaviour, you could create cars that are people’s personal clinic on wheels and contribute meaningfully to benefiting people’s health

Sounds intriguing? Sounds scary? Read on, and get involved!

The world is in the middle of a mental health pandemic. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), rates of already-common conditions such as depression and anxiety went up by more than 25% in the first year of the pandemic, adding to the nearly one billion people who were already living with a mental disorder. One in eight adults in England receives treatment for mental health conditions, in particular for Depression and Anxiety, according to the UK-based Mental Health Foundation. These conditions are characterised by their slow onset and long response times to treatment, which takes weeks or even months.

Another slow-changing medical condition affecting far too many people is dementia. It currently affects 55 million people worldwide, costs the global economy $1.3 TRILLION per annum and is growing by 10 million people annually. And of course, there are a number of other slow-changing brain and neurological conditions that perhaps are underreported but that still impact a significant number of people. Taken together, this class of slow-changing conditions have a massive burden on the world.

There is already technology that can automatically detect indications of these slow-changing medical conditions. The premise is simple: certain medical conditions cause specific changes in expressive behaviour. Emerging face and voice analysis technology can accurately and objectively measure this expressive behaviour in terms of facial muscle actions, gaze direction, tone of voice etc, and therefore if used well can be used to determine the presence and severity of mental health conditions.

Detecting these conditions early helps! For depression and anxiety, early detection enables early intervention, which has been shown to stop serious incidents in most cases, massively improve people’s quality of life, and help healthcare systems and individuals save money.

And last year there was a breakthrough in dementia treatment when The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted full approval to a new Alzheimer’s treatment called lecanemab, which has been shown to moderately slow cognitive and functional decline in early-stage cases of the disease. On the back of this, there are currently 160 clinical trials for dementia treatments registered in the UK alone. So, if you get a diagnosis for one of these slow-changing conditions, there is real hope for treatment!

I’m an automotive engineer/product manager, what does this have to do with me?

You may not have thought about this before, but as a professional in the automotive industry, you are now suddenly in a position where you could contribute meaningfully to benefiting people’s health! Through in-cabin sensing of this slow changing behaviour, together we can create cars that are people’s personal clinic on wheels!

Think about it. A car is the perfect location to do this sensing because a lot of other variables are kept fixed: daily commutes mean the same route, same person, same time of measurement. The cabin acts as a controlled environment with optimal sensor placement, noise cancellation, and a limited set of actions that an occupant may be performing at any one time. Emerging self-driving capabilities will free occupants to go beyond passive measuring to include interactive tasks and do simple exercises and therapy with the help of their internet-connected car.

That’s great. But I’m scared of getting involved in the medical business. What if I get it wrong?

So you can meaningfully contribute to improving people’s health. But how on earth do you as an automotive professional even get started? How do you make the jump from being in the business of transport, to being in the business of someone’s health and wellbeing? If you take this to its natural conclusion, wouldn’t a car become a medical device? How do you even get started on a task like that?

BLUESKEYE AI can guide you through this. It is your perfect design and development partner. Not only does BLUESKEYE AI have absolute state of the art in-cabin sensing of medically relevant human face and voice behaviour, with face tracking in NIR or RGB unrivalled in accuracy, robustness, or speed, for example. BLUESKEYE specialises in detecting medically relevant behaviour that can be used to detect depression, fatigue, dementia, and other medical conditions. Our technology is developed to clinical grade standards. We also provide our technology to pharmaceutical companies and our depression recognition technology is undergoing clinical trials in the UK’s NHS. BLUESKEYE is working with renowned academic institutes to deliver the first Dementia detection algorithms and on ways in which people with cognitive decline can continue driving for longer.

And as a little bonus, you will get a bunch of features that will soon become a regulatory requirement. The EURO-NCAP 2030 vision requires new cars to measure and mitigate against emotional and social distraction, fitness to drive, and detect medical conditions that prohibit driving. You would get those features with the same technology.

Do you want to learn more about how you can contribute with BLUESKEYE’s help? Request a demo here!