New algorithm detects heart disease from selfies raising privacy concerns – By Futurist and Virtual Keynote Speaker Matthew Griffin

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from our XPotential Academy, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. We already live in a world where a simple selfie can tell companies about your character, your personality, and even your intent to criminality – let alone your general emotional state or health – but now a new algorithm has been developed to detect coronary artery disease solely from nothing more than patients facial photos. The proof-of-concept, published in the European Heart Journal, needs more refinement before it becomes a useful clinical tool but independent experts are already suggesting there are profound ethical considerations that need to be resolved before a system like this can even think about being deployed in the wild. Alopecia, Xanthelasmata, a yellowing on the eyelids, and Arcus Corneae, an opaque ring around the cornea, are among several facial biomarkers to indicate a person may be suffering poor cardiovascular health. A team of researchers from China has now developed a deep learning algorithm that can study just four photos of an individual to determine a person's risk of coronary artery disease.