Pfizer eventually formalized the acquisition, for nearly $ 120 million, of the small Australian digital health care company ResApp which has developed asmartphone app capable of diagnosing Covid-19 by analyzing the sound of cough.
The pharmaceutical giant, through its Australian subsidiary, had already proposed an agreement last April to acquire the company for about 100 million Australian dollars, about 74.2 million dollars, and now the operation is concluded.
For a decade or so, ResApp Health has been using machine learning algorithms to analyze a person’s cough and breath sound recordings to determine the extent of awide range of respiratory diseases including pneumonia, asthma, bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (BPCO).
Then, in 2020, with the pandemic, the team quickly incorporated Covid-19 diagnoses into its cough recognition technology. And at the beginning of 2022 the first data of a pilot study arrived, from which it emerged that the system is able to accurately detect 92% of positive Covid cases, just from the sound of the cough. The system also recorded high specificity (80%), meaning that only two out of 10 people screened received false positive results.
The ResApp program, dubbed ResAppDx, already received the CE mark for use in Europe and was approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration in August of this year.