This AI-Powered Health App Can Double As Filipinos' Personal Doctors During The Pandemic And Beyond

The app is called Pulse, and it was developed by UK-based health company Babylon Health and launched in the Philippines with the help of insurance firm, Prudential Life. Pulse is by far the most advanced app of its kind in the mobile health industry. The fact that it's powered by artificial intelligence should excite you the most!

What exactly does being "AI-powered" entail? Well, first of all, that means that Pulse doesn't function like the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of health apps there is on the market that rely on stored information. Many of these apps are like mini search engines; think Google, but focused squarely on health. Pulse on the other hand offers a way more interactive experience where its AI system gets to know you better the more the more you use the app and the more information you share, and therefore has the ability to offer specific advice fit for your medical profile.

The AI system was also developed to be able to mimic a doctor's brain (that is, it's equipped with an analytical capacity to understand what a patient is trying to communicate or explain, even when they're unable to provide clear examples or exact symptoms) to offer the most individualized experience that the mobile health market has seen, by far.

Pulse developers offer another impressive guarantee to its users: the app, or rather its AI-powered system, will only ever make the same mistake once. Its "continuous learning loop" does exactly that: remember inaccuracies and errors and store them in the system to improve its performance for patients' future use. (If you've ever felt frustrated about the how far off the results that online symptom checkers give you, or the repetitiveness of other health apps, you'll definitely be blown away by what this continuous learning loop can do for you).

While it offers many functions, Pulse will likely be most used for its Healthcheck and Symptom Checker features. Healthcheck starts off with a questionnaire you need to complete. Some questions are answerable by yes or no, while some follow a multiple choice format. At the end of the questionnaire, you'll be given information about your overall physical well-being. The best part about Pulse's Healthcheck and Symptom Checker features, though, are its presentation of your "digital twin." Pulse generates a 3D image of a human body representing yours as a visual model of your health. The image shows you which areas of your body are in need of some good old TLC or immediate medical attention.

The Healthcheck and Symptom Check functions don't stop there, however. They go as far as giving Pulse users specific recommendations for how to improve their physical well-being and even identifies potential diseases and conditions they can acquire later on in life should they fail to make improvements, plus the steps they can take to stop this from happening. Know that none of the advice Pulse offers will ever be generic as it studies an individual's state, rather than gather data from a group (say, females aged 40 and up with a family history of breast cancer) then make suggestions based on collective information.

Pulse also goes beyond "treating a sickness." You don't have to be diagnosed with a disease, or suspect that you are a candidate for a serious health condition, to be able to make use of Pulse. That's because its goal is for users to be well, and a state of wellness is truly something that all persons want regardless of their medical profile. For those who just wish to keep track of and maintain their health, Pulse gives intelligent suggestions for nutrition and physical activity, and even assesses your mental well-being, sexual activity, sleep patterns, and substance use history in relation to your overall health.

As for the cherry on top of the cake, Pulse is absolutely free. All you need is a smart phone and a WiFi connection or a postpaid data package. Pulse users also don't need to be Prudential Life clients to be able to use it.

Pulse was first launched in Malaysia last year and is already available for downloading in the Philippines. Pulse developers are confident that a Filipino market will take to the app, considering that their research has shown that in all of Southeast Asia, Filipinos use digital symptom checkers the most!

And of course, because of the nature of the information that Pulse collects, users are guaranteed data privacy.