What Does Your Voice Say About Your Health? There & #039;s an App for That

Jim Harper knows that if his mother, who lives across the country from him, hears his voice on the phone she'll be able to tell within seconds if he hasn't been getting enough sleep or if he's coming down with a cold. That's what makes him confident that health information is present in the vocal chords, he told BIOMEDevice Boston attendees on Tuesday. Many experienced doctors also tend to pick up on vocal cues that contribute to their characterization of a patient's condition, but Harper said this information typically isn't integrated into healthcare in any kind of formal way because it is subjective. Different people have different abilities to pick up on these signals and interpret them in a health context, he said. Harper's company, Sonde Health, is developing a voice-based technology platform that leverages machine intelligence to detect subtle changes in a user's voice to possibly signal a variety of health conditions ranging from a sinus infection to depression. The company's app-based technology is just one example of how artificial intelligence is beginning to change the way the industry defines a medical device. "Perceptual models, things like what your mother can do, I think are interestingly a great path to unlocking the potential for health and wellness," Harper said. "AI can take those perceptual cues in the acoustic sounds of what we are speaking, and also other signals not related to speech, and create objective, quantifiable measures that correlate with th...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: BIOMEDevice Boston Digital Health Source Type: news