AI-powered phone app detects Covid in your voice in less than ONE minute
AN APP that can detect Covid in your voice has been developed by researchers.
The AI-powered tech is easier to use and more accurate than lateral flow tests, it is claimed.
The app asks users to cough, breathe deeply then read a short sentence three times.
In tests, it correctly identified positive cases 89 per cent of the time and negative cases 83 per cent in less than a minute.
Researcher Wafaa Aljbawi, from the University of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, said: “The tests can be provided at no cost and are simple to interpret.
"They could be used at the entry points for large gatherings, enabling rapid screening.”
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She said lateral flow tests missed 44 out of 100 positive cases, while the app would miss just 11.
But the app may wrongly diagnose 17 in 100 non-infected people, compared with one in 100 for lateral flow.
Covid usually affects the upper respiratory tract and vocal cords, leading to changes in a person’s voice.
The app uses data from Cambridge University, which collected 893 audio samples from 4,352 participants including 308 Covid patients.
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The study used a voice analysis technique, Mel Spectrogram.
To distinguish Covid patient voices from non-sufferers, the team built an artificial intelligence system based on neural networks which mimic how the human brain operates.
The research was presented at the European Respiratory Society conference.
