New England Researchers Hope Voice Assistants Can Spot Signs Of Dementia

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — An effort to use voice-assistant devices like Amazon’s Alexa to detect signs of memory problems in people has gotten a boost with a grant from the federal government. Researchers from Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the University of Massachusetts Boston will get a four-year $1.2 million grant from the National Institute on Aging. The team hopes to develop a system that would use machine and deep learning techniques to detect changes in speech patterns to determine if someone is a risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer’s. “We are tackling a significant and complicated data-science question: whether the collection of long-term speech patterns of individuals at home will enable us to develop new speech-analysis methods for early detection of this challenging disease,” Xiaohui Liang, an assistant professor of computer science from the University of Massachusetts Boston, said in a statement. “Our team envisions that the changes in the speech patterns of individuals using the voice assistant systems may be sensitive to their decline in memory and function over time.” John Batsis, a member of the team and associate professor of medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, said the system would help families better plan for care should someone develop a cognitive impairment. “Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are a major public health concern that lead to high health costs, risk of nursing home placement, and place an i...
Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Boston News Health dartmouth-hitchcock Dementia Science UMass Boston Source Type: news