POSTED BY DXY STAFF

The mobile device you have in your pocket can tell you a lot about what you’re doing.

Embedded within many mobile devices are a powerful array of sensors: GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, proximity sensors. These sensors provide an amazing amount of information as to what a device—and its user are doing.

Contextual Technologies, a DXY portfolio company, created an algorithm that uses a combination of inputs from the sensors to determine what a user is doing. For example, the algorithm is able to know if someone is running on a treadmill versus running in a park. Or if someone is walking down a busy street or simply sitting quietly. The algorithm then passes this information in the form of an “application programming interface” or API to software developers so that they can display information within an app differently.

Going back to the person running, if that person gets a text message, the API will allow the developer of the text messaging app to know that the recipient of the message is currently running. This now allows the developer to design a screen layout tailored to a person running; larger fonts, bigger buttons, etc. Then when the person stops running, the API will indicate that and the developer can have the text messaging app revert back to a normal display, all of this being possible thanks to the embedded sensors within the device.

The app DXY completed for the Cleveland Clinic, the iPad concussion assessment tool, relies on using the embedded sensors in the iPad to measure the vestibular system and stability of a patient. By reading the inputs generated from the device, an algorithm compares these inputs to normalized data to determine how stable a concussed patient may be. The sensitivity is so good that it is able to determine whether a patient takes their hands off of their hips during the evaluation.

The resulting data from the concussion assessment tool allows clinicians a means of objectively measuring what was once measured through highly subjective means. The system will be able to catch concussions earlier, thereby improving how concussed patient receive care.

Most users don’t realize how powerful their mobile device actually is until they start to see more complex apps like these and the neat tricks they do.