BlueSkeye appearance on BBC TV

Blueskeye AI, recently appeared in an episode of the BBC current affairs programme Panorama.

Founding CEO, Professor  Michel Valstar, spoke to journalist Lara Lewington for a programme entitled, “Beyond Human, Artificial Intelligence and Us.” The programme was broadcast on 14 August and can be seen on the BBC IPlayer. 

Valstar explained how the company’s work, using artificial intelligence to analyse face and voice data, to interpret medically relevant expressed behaviour and help improve peoples’ quality of life had developed over an 18 year academic career in computer vision and machine learning for facial expression analysis.

Valstar spoke about the work the company was doing on maternal mental health. 

One in five mums suffer from poor mental health, and 70% underplay this or hide it altogether. And while all research points out that early intervention really works in terms of outcomes and cost, less than half get a diagnosis at all.

Depression causes changes to the face and voice (muscle retardation). Blueskeye’s face and voice AI can accurately determine facial muscle actions, gaze direction, and tone of voice. By getting mums and mums to be to undertake simple and fun tasks regularly, such as reading a story to their baby or completing a pregnancy diary on their own phone, it can detect changes over time in this expressive behaviour that indicate problems with mental health. Mums can share this information with their Doctors giving them potentially more objective  and more reliable information with which to make and monitor treatment decisions.

BlueSkeye is currently preparing to undertake a clinical trial with the NHS and the University of Nottingham for software that helps mums and their doctors to better measure and manage maternal mental health.