Vocal biomarkers the future of diagnostic medicine
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Image Source - Google | Image by - The Medical Futurist |
A biomarker or biological marker is a blend of medical signs that point out the medical state of a person. Actually, they take into account both objective and quantifiable markers from biochemical and radiology features to various health parameters. You could have understood that vocal biomarkers are medical signs observed from the features of your voice. From those characteristics, vocal biomarkers reveal a lot about your health. They then have a great potential in detecting serious health risks. Find out here, some of the facts you need to know about vocal biomarkers and their numerous applications in medicine.
1.Vocal biomarkers reforming diagnostics
Vocal biomarkers have an amazing
potential in revolutionizing diagnostics. As for diseases affecting the heart,
vocal folds or lungs, artificial intelligence-based voice tools offer amazing
perspectives in medicine. Thus, vocal biomarkers used to diagnose such diseases
can also be used for COVID-screening. Does it mean that is it possible to
diagnose illnesses from the features of your voice?
Well, vocal biomarkers might help in detecting some diseases earlier than an average check-up procedure. If they can be used for COVID-screening, imagine how easy it would be for health professionals to identify patients with coronary artery disease, mental health disorders, and even Parkinson’s disease! Patients would no more have to go to the doctors’ office, pay for costly examinations and wait for long lasting days before having the results.
2.Reinventing healthcare
Vocal biomarkers are part of the
solutions that will significantly enriches evidence for clinical development.
Voice analysis provides a new therapeutic solution that actually helps to
better understand the patient’s state, disease progression, and even the way
patients respond to a certain treatment.
But, vocal biomarkers are not meant to provide a final diagnosis; they rather help medical professionals find potential cases of common diseases by rapidly identifying people who have a higher probability of being sick. That said, vocal biomarkers tools may help doctors remotely assess their patients’ health state, so that they can immediately provide the appropriate treatment plans.
3.Offering effective solutions in healthcare
During a pandemic, where every medical institution is striving to find out how to overcome the crisis, using vocal biomarkers may actually be a safe solution. In fact, adding voice analysis to the current methods will provide more efficiency to what is being done. For example, some institutions use vocal biomarkers along with machine learning to develop valuable insights into healthcare systems. On the other side, some are developing smartphone apps especially designed to detect COVID-19. And that’s just the beginning of a long journey of researches as far as vocal biomarkers are concerned.
4.Identifying diseases over a phone call
COVID-screening is definitely not the only thing to focus on when it comes to the application of vocal biomarkers. There are also various ailments including chronic respiratory and cardiac conditions (but also depression) to focus on. In fact, some research works on the development of new voice-based tools for patient health monitoring and detection are undergoing. The first study that has been made uses vocal biomarkers to detect pulmonary hypertension via phone calls combined with the adapted apps. Imagine a second: what if over a phone call, diseases could be identified?
5.Ensuring human longevity
Improving our longevity starts with a better understanding of our health. Actually, some diseases significantly impact our major sound producing systems. As a result, they can alter one’s voice so that using vocal biomarkers technology can easily help in detecting whether something is wrong… or not. Thus, identifying what may be wrong is the first path to better prevent and manage health conditions. Along with the pieces of advice and the treatment given by the doctor, patients are ensuring their longevity. Just as people are used to saying “prevention is better than cure”.
6.Vocal biomarkers preventing depression/mental issues
Vocal biomarkers also have the capacity to help identify top signs of psychological disorders. In fact, this is a huge step in moving from a responsive to a preventive care. But it would especially be useful in monitoring chronically conditions such as anxiety disorders. Med-tech startups claim to be able to recognize mental health changes from the variations in one’s voice. Others use a machine-learning algorithm to detect signs of depression just after listening to 20 seconds of a patient’s speech. They all aim at helping people understand their emotional health through voice by analyzing acoustics and words in any natural speech.
7.Treatment against mental disorders
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, many companies develop a science-based assessment in order to provide a safety solution for those falling into emotional and mental issues. They also developed a voice-based platform for diagnosing and monitoring patients who suffer from mental and physical health conditions. Some researchers designed vocal biomarkers tools to analyze brief voice samples meant to shade a range of medical concerns. Those solutions might be used in call centers, telehealth platforms, for remote patient monitoring apps, but also in healthcare systems
8.Revealing Parkinson’s disease
Common medical tests and
researches are time-consuming, difficult and costly as for Parkinson’s disease
is concerned. Fortunately, scientists found out that Parkinson’s illness has an
impact on the limb movements just as the voice! Such a finding helps some of
the scientists and physicians develop a technology for diagnosing the disease
more easily. As a matter of fact, they started the Parkinson’s Voice
Initiative, which helped them collect about 10,000 voice recordings across the
world. The project seems to be very speed and low-cost, and might help in detecting
and treating the Parkinson’s illness before it gets to an advanced stage.
It’s obvious that more researches
should be made when it comes to vocal biomarkers. However, there is a serious
matter hanging on there: although algorithms analyzing systems may not
understand the content of a speech, listening to people conversations in order
to analyze the vocal biomarkers could constitute a serious invasion of privacy.
Along with the development of vocal biomarkers tools, pioneers should consider
privacy issues before vocal analytics apps reach the entire world.