Smartphones tracking walking could predict mortality risk, study shows

Keeping your smartphone in your pocket could help provide information about Australia's health and mortality risk, a study has claimed.

The study showed passive smartphone monitoring of your walking activity, meaning if you keep your phone in your pocket and it tracks your steps, could help researchers understand a nation's health and death risk.

Researchers studied 100,000 people in the UK who wore activity monitors with motion sensors for one week.

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Although the wrist sensor is different to how people usually carry a smartphone, the devices can detect information about walking intensity.

Researchers were able to model a person's mortality risk by using data from just six minutes of walking a day alongside other demographic characteristics.

A person's walking speed was a predictor of five-year mortality independent of age and sex, the study said.

"Our results show passive measures with motion sensors can achieve similar accuracy to active measures of gait speed and walk pace," the authors said.

"Our scalable methods offer a feasible pathway towards national screening for health risk."

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Researcher Bruce Schatz said smartphones monitoring a person's activity could provide information about a population's life expectancy, all from the device keeping track of your steps from your pocket.

"I have spent a decade using cheap phones for clinical models of health status," Schatz said.

"These have now been tested on the largest national cohort to predict life expectancy at population scale."

The latest study comes after previous research measured national health and mortality risk through walking tests and self-reported walking pace but researchers took it one step further by using smartphones.

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