Further help in identifying Covid
A new app could accurately detect COVID-19 infection through people's voices with the help of artificial intelligence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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