Researchers of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a system, called BioPhone, to keep a track on user’s heart rate, breathing pattern, and other physiological measurement while the smartphone is in user’s pocket or even when inside bag. In other words, this system will let your smartphone monitor a number of your physiological condition even without being in direct touch of the body.

This system uses the in-built accelerometer of the smartphones to receive biological signals from the body and then give accurate results. Research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab and lead author of the paper, Javier Hernandez, mentioned on a paper that biological signals from the body as well as micromovements of the body as a result of heart beat, raising and falling of chest can be monitored through accelerometer and without the need of any wrist-worn device.

The paper presented on August as part of a conference also mentioned that BioPhone system is created to capture bodily data at the time when you are not making too much physical movements, in order to provide more accurate results. This data will further help to identify whether the smartphone user is experiencing stress or other complications.

About the modus operandi of this study, Javier Hernandez stated that the team has been also to “develop methods to extract heart and breathing rates from accelerometer data and compare them with measurements obtained with FDA-cleared sensors.”

Though the result of this study is satisfactory but there are conditions and challenges that this team will have to consider before declaring this system suitable and useful of smartphone users. Conditions like if the smartphone is placed on the back pocket how accurate will be the results as compared to placing the phone of t-shirt pocket or bag will have to be worked upon by this team.

Story Inputs: MIT Technology Review, Digital Trends