Researchers develop an app to detect Covid-19 by listening to your voice

Team Udayavani, Apr 30, 2020, 2:11 PM IST

Amid Covid-19, researchers around the world are coming up new technologies to aid in battling the pandemic.

Now, Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an AI-based experimental app that screens a human’s cough to detect if he or she may have Covid-19.

It is said that it is a collaboration between CMU researchers and voice scientists and researchers who work on “voice forensic technologies’ The app is called Covid Voice Detector and is free.

How does it work

The users need to log in after which there will be a tutorial for vocal prompts that includes coughing three times, reciting the alphabet and holding out vowels for as long as you can to check your lung capacity. At the end the users can see a score within 1 to 10 telling how likely their “voice carries signatures of Covid-19”.

The researchers match voice samples against those of known Covid-19 patients. There will also be options to state your demography like your age, sex, height and weight as well as if you have been diagnosed with Covid-19 or if you have any of the symptoms.

Bhiksha Raj, a professor who is also a part of the project said, “The primary objective of our effort/website at this point of time is to collect large numbers of voice recordings that we could use to refine the algorithm into something we and the medical community are confident about. I urge people not to make healthcare decisions based on the scores we give you. You could be endangering yourself and those around you”

Also, a team of researchers from Harvard and MIT are using machine learning to examine through voice recordings from Covid-19 patients and healthy people in an attempt to identify specific vocal signatures that could indicate someone is carrying the virus.