TAIPEI, Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This year the world was suffering from the pandemic, FaceHeart recognizes the very need for a contactless detection device in order to come up with better solutions to address this problem. Since its founding, FaceHeart has won numerous awards in recognition of its innovative visions and drive for cutting-edge technology, including being named one of the top five startups in Taiwan Elevator Pitch 2018.

Started with the vision of leading a healthy living through the daily vital sign measurements

In diagnose patients with symptoms of COVID-19, most of the people thought fever is the main and most important symptoms of coronavirus. However, it is not. Some studies showed the serious symptoms of COVID-19 include, severe shortness of breath, high fever, dehydration, elevated heart rate (above 100 bpm), cough and so on. Thus, tachycardia is one of the early indicators of COVID-19.

The traditional method to slow the spread of the virus is to reduce the exposure, which means people may need to stay home for quarantine, and it may cause many problems, for example, the enterprises, economy and human life. This is when a team of talented engineers led by Dr. Bing-Fei Wu of National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU) saw their opportunity, one that would transform the landscape of the healthcare industry while helping millions to lead a healthier and stress-reduced life.

Under Dr. Wu's leadership, FaceHeart was successfully founded in 2018. The many years of research development work done in image-based vital signs monitoring had allowed a university lab to pivot into a rising startup that quickly gained the interest of several venture capitalist firms. In 2019, a Series A funding led by MediaTek helped FaceHeart raise enough capital that drove its valuation near $500,000,000 NTD. FaceHeart sees its image-based contactless monitoring device as an edge to claim a sizable share of the global pandemic prevention market.

It all says on your face

FaceHeart is the leading developer of image recognition technology with the most direct applications in vital signs monitoring. The underlying principle behind its innovative product comes down to developing an advanced deep learning algorithm that iteratively trains itself with the image data extracted from remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). Vital signs such as heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and emotions display certain characteristics or signals which are mostly distinct from one another. Certain motions of a person might suggest his or her emotions, for instance. So a camera records these motions that are then fed to a deep learning algorithm for data processing. Once a sufficient amount of data has been collected to draw meaningful conclusions of these telling signs, a deep learning operation can then be performed to make high-accuracy predictions of a person's vital and emotional states. 

With their unique innovation, FaceHeart has been selected by Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) as one of the 100 featured Taiwanese startups to showcase at CES 2021.

CES 2021 TTA-VR Pavilion: https://pse.is/3brguu

SOURCE FaceHeart