We¡¯re seeing exponential growth in the number of COVID-19 cases in India. However, due to limited availability of testing kits, people aren¡¯t able to get themselves tested. And even the testing process takes hours to deliver results.
However, researchers are working to bridge this gap. They¡¯ve developed an AI app that listens to your cough sounds and detects if you have COVID-19 or don¡¯t.?
The app is called COVID-19 voice detector. Developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers and engineers working on voice forensic technologies at voa.ai, telling.ai and hat.ai, along with Incremental Healthcare LLC.
The app asks you to sign up, where it¡¯ll ask basic demographic data like height, weight, as well as if you¡¯ve had COVID-19 symptoms like fever, cough etc.?
After this process, you¡¯re walked through a series of vocal prompts that ask you to cough three times. It also asks you to recite the alphabet as well as saying specific vowels, as long as you can to check the holding capacity of your lungs.
The entire test can take roughly around 5 minutes and once it ends, the app gives you a rating on the scale of 1 to 10 revealing how likely your voice carries the signature of COVID-19.
The app compares your voice signature with the ones of COVID-19 patients in their database to give an accurate scoring.?
The result, however, isn¡¯t a sure shot way to detect COVID-19. Even the website of the app clearly states, with numerous disclaimers that it isn¡¯t a replacement for the actual tests, it¡¯s still in an experimental stage. It is also not approved by CDC or even the FDA.
However, with time and enough data, the researchers feel that it has the potential to accurately detect COVID-19 just from voice signatures.?
In case you want to have some fun and give COVID-19 Voice Detector a spin, click here to visit the website.