Audio Recordings that Reliably Detect COVID-19 not Quite Ready for Use

August 11, 2021 by Daniel Mollenkamp
Audio Recordings that Reliably Detect COVID-19 not Quite Ready for Use
A Reel-to-Reel tape recorder. (Wikimedia Commons)

The underlying algorithms for an app that can mass detect COVID-19 through audio are not quite ready yet, researchers say.

COVID-19 has a distinct effect on the audio produced by infected people, which has enticed researchers to explore using it as a way to create widely available mass testing for the disease. With effective mass testing available, they expect public health officials would be able to better control the disease.

Using machine learning, a branch of computer science and artificial intelligence in which algorithms learn to spot patterns, researchers have been working to create algorithms that reliably identify the disease across the population.

It would also mark a milestone in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform public health, the kind of transformation that regulators are gearing up for. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for instance, has begun exploring regulatory pathways for the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in medical devices.

A study published in April in BMJ Innovations, a prominent health innovation journal, reported that deep learning could be used to identify both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 from audio recordings of breathing and coughing.

It may also be useful for determining the likelihood of death in infected patients, according to a 2021 review of machine learning and COVID-19.

While a scalable app for audio detection could be deployed this week, determining whether these technologies actually detect COVID-19 is more of a challenge, Harry Coppock, a doctoral student in artificial intelligence at Imperial College London and an author on the BMJ study, said in an interview.

An article in The Lancet that Coppock co-authored raised a number of questions that still need to be sorted out.

The issues preventing the release of this technology revolve around the question of whether the algorithms are truly spotting biomarkers for COVID-19 or whether they are latching onto other correlations in the datasets, the article said.

The seeming effectiveness of locating infected people could be attributed to the cleverness of the algorithms which may simply be identifying traits that are often found in people who have COVID-19, which would mean that the algorithms are not actually catching COVID-19. 

For instance, the study says, they could be distinguishing between healthy and sick individuals generally, or between socioeconomic, geographic, ethnic, or other comorbidities. 

They may also respond to other factors in the environment or in the patients’ emotional state since many of the patients used in the studies have known they had COVID-19 when recording the audio samples and sick patients might have other things in common that have nothing to do with the disease such as they are more likely to be inside. 

“I would not endorse a COVID detection app currently due to the dangers of false-negative results and inconclusive results,” Coppock said.

The Lancet article also raised some concerns over the datasets, which for the most part have not been peer-reviewed or released.

“I believe it could be very transformative. However, the tech still needs to come a long way before it can be used,” Coppock said.

“We have to be very sure otherwise the consequences of using a faulty test are huge.”

A+
a-
  • Audio recordings
  • COVID-19
  • detection
  • Food and Drug Administration
  • Research
  • science
  • In The News

    Health

    Voting

    Research

    December 6, 2023
    by Dan McCue
    New Report Sheds Some Light on Rare Post-COVID Shot Syndrome

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A study from the Yale School of Medicine sheds some new light on the rare, but... Read More

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A study from the Yale School of Medicine sheds some new light on the rare, but chronic and debilitating condition some people report experiencing after getting a COVID-19 vaccination. The paper, which was posted on the preprint server medRxiv and has not... Read More

    November 7, 2023
    by Jesse Zucker
    Getting Quality Sleep Impacts Health and Fitness

    WASHINGTON — We’ve all woken up feeling groggy and dreading the day ahead. When you’re busy and stressed, it’s hard... Read More

    WASHINGTON — We’ve all woken up feeling groggy and dreading the day ahead. When you’re busy and stressed, it’s hard to get to bed early. Even if you manage an early bedtime, sometimes you can’t fall asleep. The CDC states that 33% of adults sleep less... Read More

    Mind-Altering Ketamine Becomes Latest Pain Treatment, Despite Little Research

    WASHINGTON (AP) — As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking... Read More

    WASHINGTON (AP) — As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy. Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth... Read More

    AI Raises Fears About Risks to Humanity. Are Tech and Political Leaders Doing Enough?

    LONDON (AP) — Chatbots like ChatGPT wowed the world with their ability to write speeches, plan vacations or hold a conversation as good... Read More

    LONDON (AP) — Chatbots like ChatGPT wowed the world with their ability to write speeches, plan vacations or hold a conversation as good as or arguably even better than humans do, thanks to cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. Now, frontier AI has become the latest buzzword as concerns grow that... Read More

    October 18, 2023
    by Dan McCue
    FDA Establishes New Advisory Committee on Digital Health Technologies

    WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is creating a new Digital Health Advisory Committee to help the agency assess... Read More

    WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is creating a new Digital Health Advisory Committee to help the agency assess and deal with the complex scientific and technical issues related to the burgeoning market of new digital health technologies. These technologies include everything from artificial intelligence... Read More

    Are 3D Mammograms Better Than Standard Imaging? Diverse Study Aims to Find Out

    Are 3D mammograms better than standard 2D imaging for catching advanced cancers? A clinical trial is recruiting thousands of volunteers — including... Read More

    Are 3D mammograms better than standard 2D imaging for catching advanced cancers? A clinical trial is recruiting thousands of volunteers — including a large number of Black women who face disparities in breast cancer death rates — to try to find out. People like Carole Stovall, a psychologist... Read More

    News From The Well
    scroll top