YouTube Videos Are a Gold Mine for Health Researchers

Earlier this summer, a team at England’s Keele University published a behavioral study on children with autism. But it didn’t do it by interviewing subjects, or administering questionnaires. Instead, it used YouTube videos. Bappaditya Mandal and his colleagues trained an artificial intelligence to study the body movements of children with autism, using it to classify their behaviors as either typical or atypical. The researchers’ goal, Mandal told me, is to use computers to more quickly evaluate edge cases that might normally require lab equipment or invasive tactile sensors.

Mandal’s research builds on algorithms that track the appearance of tremors or seizures in in people with autism, and vice versa. Video analysis can help scientists and families establish a narrative—when behaviors appear, what triggers them, and which parts of the body are most affected—“all the things the doctors need to know in order to do a good diagnosis,” Mandal explained.