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I feel like every time I cough these days it gives me a mini panic attack that I try to quell with a steady stream of chamomile tea. Fortunately, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a way to test whether a person has COVID-19 just from the sound of your cough, so soon I will be able to put my inner hypochondriac to rest.
The tool uses neural networks that can detect the subtle changes in a person’s cough that indicate whether they are infected, even if they have no other symptoms. Asymptomatic people infected with covid-19 are a vector of the virus that is particularly difficult to manage, in part because they are less likely to get tested because, duh, why would they if they feel fine, right? Therefore, the carriers could infect others without even realizing it.
But even asymptomatic carriers have a signal that shows they are infected, the MIT researchers found. Everything is in the cough.
The difference between the cough of a healthy person and the cough of someone infected with the virus is so slight that it is imperceptible to the human ear. So the team developed an AI to detect these small differences using tens of thousands of recorded cough samples and spoken words. And it has been ridiculously accurate in early testing, recognizing 98.5% of coughs from people with confirmed COVID-19 cases and 100% of coughs from asymptomatic people.
Is that how it works. One neural network measures sounds associated with the strength of the vocal cords, while another detects signals related to a person’s emotional state, such as frustration, which can produce “flat affect.” A third network listens for subtle changes in lung and respiratory performance. The team then combined the three models and overlaid them with an algorithm to detect muscle breakdown.
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Doctors have known for years that a patient’s cough can reveal important clues about their health. Even before the time of the pandemic (God, do you remember those?), Research groups trained AI to detect other diseases such as pneumonia Y asthma just for the sound.
However, research is not without limits. MIT scientists cautioned that even at the level of precision achieved so far, people should not use this AI as a substitute for testing for COVID-19. They also claimed that it was not built to diagnose people who are actively exhibiting covid-19 symptoms.
However, technology could still play a vital role as a virus detection tool. The team is reportedly developing a free “easy-to-use” app that can be used as a convenient screening tool for people who don’t show any symptoms but are concerned they may be infected.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been working on a similar application called COVID voice detector which, as the name implies, could determine if someone has covid-19 just by the sound of their voice. Soon enough, you’ll just have to cough or talk on the phone to find out if it’s safe to hang out with people. Or maybe not even that:
“Pandemics could be a thing of the past if screening tools are always in the background and are constantly being improved,” the researchers wrote, hinting at a kind of Minority Report scenario I have no doubt would be a privacy nightmare.
Yes, that is going to be a “no” from me. I might be fine coughing on my phone, but I already have enough covid-related anxiety without the health police surrounding me like those guys in yellow suits from Monsters inc. every time I cough.
