Brainworks uses smartphone camera and AI to detect your heart rate, breathing

Brainworks is combining artificial intelligence and simple smartphone camera images to automatically detect someone's heart rate or breathing rate. And that's just one of the avenues the Emeryville, California-based company is pursuing in its work to use intelligent ambient biometric sensors to improve health care. Brainworks CEO Phillip Alvelda spoke at our VB Transform AI event on Thursday, and he demoed the technology in real time, both onstage and in an interview. He said health care should be more preventative than reactive. With that in mind, the company's technology is contactless and always-on, though it only works if users have opted in for the constant monitoring, which -- unlike most medical equipment -- is physically non-invasive. That's particularly important when it comes to monitoring the heartbeat of a premature baby, whose skin is so sensitive it can be harmed by patches and wires associated with vital sign monitors.