Voice app gauges health
Local company creates new tool
A new app that can detect respiratory symptoms using a simple, six-second voice sample was created by a Boston company in hopes of helping employers safely reopen offices during continued uncertainty in the coronavirus pandemic.
All users have to do is say “ahhh” for six seconds into the app, said Sonde Health CEO David Liu, and the app, called Sonde One, can pick up on symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain and coughing.
“This is a very low-cost tool that can be deployed to everybody,” said Liu.
Liu explained that when someone is sick, there are changes in their vocal biomarkers that the human ear cannot pick up, but technology can.
“Voice is something your body emits, like blood or saliva or other things, it’s a biomarker and you can, with the right technology, glean information from voice that can tell you information about a lot of different things,” said Liu.
The voice analysis is about 75% accurate, said Liu, but it’s paired with a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention questionnaire and a body temperature reading which increases accuracy about a person’s condition.
The full assessment takes about a minute to complete and will tell the user whether they have a low, medium or high risk of respiratory symptoms.
Employers who deploy the app can create their own rubric of criteria needed to enter the workplace, and the app will tell a worker if they can come into the office or if they should stay home.
The app can also utilize a QR code that can be scanned at an organization’s front door to make sure employees are following protocol.
“You have a large population of people, you want to test them every day, you want to see if there’s a meaningful change in their condition,” said Liu.
Sonde Health has been around for nearly five years and has collected more than 300,000 voice samples from 50,000 subjects that all went into the voice sample technology, according to Liu.
Sonde partnered with corporate wellness solutions provider Wellworks for You to make the tool available to its clients and their 1.4 million participating members.
The company also partnered with SHI International, a 5,000person global provider of technology products and services.
Liu said the companies are testing the app now and plan to roll it out next month.
“After months of remote work and distributed workforces, many employers want to get their employees back in the office; they’re just not sure of the best way to do it,” says Thomas Tegler, president of Wellworks for You.
As the app is developed and rolled out, Liu said it could be used for many other uses in the future.
Sonde One could be used in schools, or even for the average person to assess risk before heading out to a restaurant or to visit with friends.
“If you think about society in general, bigger picture, we are restricting ourselves artificially because the safest thing right now is isolation but how long can that go for?” said Liu.
He said, “The more time it takes for people to get on campus and in classrooms, the tougher it is for everybody.”