HEALTH

A new application recognizes Covid infection by voice

Covid-19, vaccinations remain crucial, equally so are tools that enable early diagnosis of the disease. On this front, there may soon be a decisive new ally.

A smartphone app that can detect infection by voice. The project is by an Australian company specializing in digital health care, but the first results seem so satisfactory that it convinced the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to invest 116 million to buy it.

Thanks to the use of a new Artificial Intelligence model, starting from simple voice recordings the Application is able to detect Covid infection with an 89% accuracy rate.

In addition, its use is faster and, most importantly, less expensive than rapid antigen texts, which are also very difficult to distribute in poorer countries.

foto Freepik
Further help in identifying Covid
A new app could accurately detect COVID-19 infection through people's voices with the help of artificial intelligence.
foto Freepik
Pfizer wants to buy the app
The project is by an Australian company specializing in digital health care, but the early results seem so satisfactory that it convinced the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to invest 116 million to buy it.
foto Freepik
Where does the idea start?
COVID-19 infection usually affects the upper respiratory tract and vocal cords, leading to changes in a person's voice. Aljbawi, Sami Simons, a pulmonologist at Maastricht University Medical Center, and Visara Urovi, also of the Institute of Data Science, decided to investigate whether it would be possible to use an AI to analyze voices to detect infection.
foto Freepik
The data used
The two professionals used data from the University of Cambridge's COVID-19 Sounds app, which contains 893 audio samples from 4,352 healthy and unhealthy participants, 308 of whom tested positive for COVID-19.
foto Freepik
How it works
Operation is extremely simple: once installed on the cell phone, the App requires you to enter some personal data and record some breathing sounds such as coughing, taking a deep breath, reading a short sentence. The developed algorithm will then do the rest.
news of hollywood's great actors
28/04/2024
Informativa ai sensi della Direttiva 2009/136/CE: questo sito utilizza solo cookie tecnici necessari alla navigazione da parte dell'utente in assenza dei quali il sito non potrebbe funzionare correttamente.