CES 2024: This 'MagicMirror' Analyzes Facial Blood Flow to Monitor Vital Signs

You: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the healthiest of them all?"

Mirror: "Not you, sorry."

There are a lot of CES announcements that, even if the thing shipped on time and did exactly what the company claims it will, are still useless garbage. This one at least would in fact do something valuable, if it actually delivered on its promises and did so with reasonable accuracy--it would probably be too expensive for regular consumer use, but this sort of "easy monitoring" is the kind of technology that can potentially do more for general health maintenance than a lot of the much fancier stuff.

The Apple Watch resting heartrate monitoring is a simple example of one such thing that does work, and is valuable--in my case, after starting a medication, I could see my resting rate go up by 15 BPM over a period of time, which in turn explained some annoying things I'd been experiencing. Stopped the drug, and could see a clear graph of my heart rate going down to a healthy level over a period of a few weeks, all without doing anything but wearing a watch regularly that I would have done anyway.

I predict that in three years every one of these will be eWaste in a landfill.

I predict that none of them will end up as ewaste, because none of them will actually ship.

That amount of information ostensibly out of a grainy 30-second video of your face is unhinged. Even if there are other sensors contributing.

Agreed. The growing non-medical “health sensor” devices are concerning. A careful balance of innovation and snake oil is one that needs to be maintained.

On their website, the would-be customer is warned, "In the United States, this product is for Investigational Use Only. The performance characteristics of this product have not been established."

This is enough for me not to be interested in this contraption.

There are a lot of CES announcements that, even if the thing shipped on time and did exactly what the company claims it will, are still useless garbage. This one at least would in fact do something valuable, if it actually delivered on its promises and did so with reasonable accuracy--it would probably be too expensive for regular consumer use, but this sort of "easy monitoring" is the kind of technology that can potentially do more for general health maintenance than a lot of the much fancier stuff.

The Apple Watch resting heartrate monitoring is a simple example of one such thing that does work, and is valuable--in my case, after starting a medication, I could see my resting rate go up by 15 BPM over a period of time, which in turn explained some annoying things I'd been experiencing. Stopped the drug, and could see a clear graph of my heart rate going down to a healthy level over a period of a few weeks, all without doing anything but wearing a watch regularly that I would have done anyway.


I predict that none of them will end up as ewaste, because none of them will actually ship.

I disagree and I am saying this as a healthcare professional. This device at best produces data from non clinically tested sources, which will provide little to no reliability. But this sits up there with full-body MRIs, something which is advertised as providing early intervention on catching problems - theoretically, before real symptoms come on - only for it to provide merely a steady income for MRI manufacturers and operators and nothing to patients bar potential misdiagnosis and anxiety.
It is a tool for those that are anxious about their health to throw more money at.
Diagnostic tools are best used when looking for a targeted outcome. The development of diagnostic technology follows the pattern of needing an outcome, and developing a tool for it.
Here, we have a technology being developed for the sake of diagnosing... well, nothing. The technology has no baseline outcome to work towards and no requirement to provide the user with strictly usable information. Worse, while it ostensibly provides possibly a prompt for a patient to see a doctor, it in fact potentially could cause someone not to, and in turn miss both valuable advice and proper diagnosis. The's nothing in this that a correct set of measurements and a blood test taken by your GP (MD or whatever you have in your country) can offer - and with more privacy to boot.

NuraLogix says that the MagicMirror can provide health information that includes blood pressure, BMI, heart rate variability, pulse rate, breathing rate, and facial skin age. It can provide risk assessments for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, fatty liver disease, and more, plus it offers assessments of mental stress and depression risk.

Does it also serve you a daily dose of snake oil? 🤣