Azumio app turns iPhone into a stress gauge
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:40
Released a couple of weeks ago, Stress Check is one of several apps from Palo Alto, Calif. start-up Azumio, which recently received $2.5 million in series A funding.
The company's first health-oriented app, Instant Heart Rate (also available for Android), has generated 8 million downloads since its release in January. The company has more apps in the pipeline.
If it's easy, and fun, to collect health personal data, more people will likely be inclined to do so--and take action, reasons Azumio co-founder Bojan Bostjancic, who stopped by CNET headquarters last week to demo the company's health apps.
Echoing the sentiments of an increasing number of players in the health app space, Bostjancic maintains that phones are the perfect platform for better connecting people to their health. They're ubiquitous; have sensors that can measure functions such as sleep patterns and fitness levels; can transmit information to medical professionals; and can even offer advice.
To use Stress Check, you hold your index finger over the iPhone's camera flash for two minutes, long enough for the app to measure the blood flowing through your finger to for patterns that would indicate elevated stress hormones. It does so by using the light from the flash to gauge subtle changes in color on the skin's surface that indicate blood flow patterns.
Similarly, you hold your finger over the light from the camera for the Instant Heart Rate app. Unlike the stress test, just 10 seconds is needed for an accurate reading; mine was accurate when I compared it with a more traditional handheld device that Bostjancic brought along.
The company is focused on the consumer market, rather than diagnostics. "Increasing awareness of heart rate and stress levels among your social network of friends is extremely important," he said. "Studies show that the more people are socially connected, the less they are affected by chronic diseases."
(CNET News)
