This App Can Detect Covid-19 Through User’s Voice; How Accurate Is It?

It's almost a year since the novel coronavirus pandemic came into being. Researchers all across the globe have been working on developing a fool-proof vaccine to combat this deadly virus. Vaccination trials have begun in nations such as India, the USA, Switzerland, and others. The technology brands are also lending in their support for the same.

Take, for instance, smartphone applications. Developers have designed several new apps recently to help the public stay updated with the COVID-19 cases and other useful information. A similar health app that focuses on preventing the COVID-19 infection spread doubling up as a health monitor is being developed by a company called Vocalis. The new AI-powered app will bar the need to visit a lab for a COVID-19 test.

How The AI Health App Detects COVID-19 Without Physical Touch?

The new health App is being designed by Vocalis which will have the ability to detect if a person is infected with COVID-19 by just using his/her voice. This is one of its kind AI being developed to detect the COVID-19 infection using smartphones.

The company will be collecting all the data using the app's AI and will use its newly developed technology to identify and detect the virus. A special algorithm has been designed by Vocalis to collect voice samples; extracting 512 features from the collected samples and then determine the possibilities of an infection.

The AI will break the voice features into an image (a spectrogram) using the same algorithm. This will help in further analysis and also identify the COVID-19 symptoms such as fever, headache, and shortness of breath.

The AI will have a pre-set database that will support spoken phrases and word counts to help with accurate output consistently. The company has a vast database that comprises over 275,000 speakers with different lingual. It will allow for easy user accessibility of this AI/app across the globe.

How Beneficial Is The New AI?

Vocalis is yet to bring this AI to a commercial platform and we are not sure by when we can expect the same. However, this new technology would be a breakthrough if its virus-detecting claims turn out to be true (up to 80 percent). The current swab dab test could be uncomfortable for many, but detecting a virus just with voice samples would be beneficial.