Forget (or almost …) molecular and antigenic swabs: in the future covid diagnoses will be made directly from the smartphone, through an app, which analyzes our voice, which was presented in Barcelona at the International Congress of the European Respiratory Society. The new method, which uses artificial intelligence, is precise, cheap and easy to use: this is why it could be a valid alternative to classic tampons, especially in developing countries where distribution is complex.
The data collected. The researchers started with data collected by the University of Cambridge’s COVID-19 Sounds app, which contained 893 audio samples recorded from 4352 participants, 308 of which were covid positive. The volunteers who had installed the app, after providing some information such as age, gender, whether they were smokers or not and if they had diseases, had to make some recordings: cough three times, breathe deeply with their mouth three to five times , and read a short sentence three times.
Better than quick swabs. After evaluating different models of artificial intelligence, the researchers found that the one called Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) gave the best results, finding the positives in 89% of cases and negatives in 83% of cases.
Covid infection, particularly its Omicron variant, normally affects the upper respiratory tract and vocal cords, changing the voice of the infected person.
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Fewer false negatives. “Rapid swabs have a sensitivity of just 56% (against 89% of the app), but a specificity of 99.5% (against 83% of the app),” Wafaa Aljbawi explained to Congress. one of the authors of the research. This means that rapid tests fail more often than AImissing a positive in 44 out of 100 cases (identifying it as negative) against 11 out of 100 in the LSTM model.
More false positives. On the contrary, the AI algorithm detects more positives than it should (17 out of 100, compared to 0.5 out of 100 in rapid tests), but this is an easily solved problem since the test is free and fast, so it is A positive result can be confirmed with a subsequent swab.
“These tests can be provided free of charge and the results are easy to interpret,” explains Aljbawi, who suggests: “given the speed of diagnosis, less than a minute, they could be used to check people who witness large events.”
More false positives. On the contrary, the AI algorithm detects more positives than it should (17 out of 100, compared to 0.5 out of 100 in rapid tests), but this is an easily solved problem since the test is free and fast, so it is A positive result can be confirmed with a subsequent PCR.
“These tests can be provided free of charge and the results are easy to interpret,” explains Aljbawi, who suggests: “given the speed of diagnosis, less than a minute, they could be used to check people who witness large events.”