VOCALS for Science!

Donate your Vocal Biomarkers to help detect COVID-19 

Vocal biomarkers have an amazing potential in reforming diagnostics through their accuracy, speed and cost-effectiveness. We’re studying the correlation between respiratory diseases and vocal biomarkers like voice, breathing and coughing noises in Germany & Europe.

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DONATE YOUR VOCAL BIOMARKERS FOR SCIENCE

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How it works

We believe that by analyzing the voice, breathing and coughing noises beyond what our ears can hear, we can unveil correlations that would enable the healthcare sytem to detect COVID-19 indepentend of locations in a fast and cost-effective way using the everyday technology that is in our smartphones. 

With are developing Artificial Intelligence methods and technique to correlate the voice with the symptoms of the COVID-19. The study is being conducted under scientific standards and with highest German Data Protection standards.

Join us now and help to fight COVID-19 by donating your voice for the science.

About the Research Project

Efficacy of COVID-19 detection with vocal biomarkers

In order to find out whether a AI-supported symptom-related recognition of respiratory diseases using vocal biomarkers for COVID is effective, we are conducting a study from April to July 2020. We collect about 500,000 audio samples in different stages from about 50.000 test people and patients, enrich the audio samples with further self-detectable digital biomarkers and compare them with COVID-19 test results to find out whether especially vocal biomarkers correlate with the actual test results.

The Online Test is a simple self-test that enables our algorithms to recognize patterns from a large scale of voice samples, that are further refined under laboratory conditions within trials.

The Mission and its Impact

The global challenge of COVID-19

Due to its characteristics, the COVID 19 pandemic places the health care systems, the economy and the individual freedom rights around the world under a stress test that is unprecedented in our globalised and highly technological world. In view of the effects of containment measures, a considerably improved data basis is needed to provide information on the spread and the lifecycle of the disease in the population in real-time. 

The Impact

The project has the potential to revolutionize COVID-19 diagnostics through its accuracy, speed and cost efficiency. Should the research hypothesis prove to be true, this would represent a breakthrough in the field of prediction and location-independent early diagnostics worldwide. Our sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm learns to use vocal biomarkers to calculate probabilities of COVID-19 infection and enable health authorities and hospitals worldwide to identify COVID-19 symptoms quickly and cost-effectively, regardless of location and enable a broad part of the world’s population to access testing and improve the accuracy of COVID-19 treatments by AI-based localization of the patient in the individual and pandemic lifecycle of COVID-19 disease. 

Supported and awarded by: The “Solution Enabler” Program of the Federal Government of Germany and part of the XPRIZE Global Alliance of Pandemic Innovators.

How you can support and join our mission to transform COVID-19 detection

Donate your Vocal Biomarkers

It takes 2 minutes to run through the short test: 100% safe and data protected, pseudonym & with encrypted transmission. Your name is not required.

Spread the word and share the website

Help us recruit more test persons and patients into the COVID-19 study by sharing and tweeting. 

 Join our research project

 

You want to be part of our trial? Whether as a health authority, clinic or research institution – get in touch!

FAQs

Why should I contribute to the research and donate my vocal biomarkers? What is the societal impact?
Vocal Biomarkers have the potential to revolutionize diagnostics through their accuracy, speed and cost efficiency. Health authorities and clinics worldwide would thus be able to identify COVID-19 symptoms quickly, inexpensively and independently of location through broad-based testing of the population and AI-based early diagnosis. This would enable the approach to improve the accuracy of testing and treatment by locating the patient in the life cycle of COVID-19 disease, reduce the burden on the medical care system through targeted treatment control, and enable health authorities to monitor the course of the pandemic more effectively. 
What is the problem that COVID-19 detection with Vocal Biomarkers is about to solve?
 Due to its characteristics (often asymptomatic, highly infectious, long incubation periods), the COVID 19 pandemic places the health care system, the economy and the individual freedom rights of society under a stress test that is unprecedented in our globalised and highly technological world. In view of the effects of containment measures, a considerably improved data basis is needed to provide information on the spread of the disease in the population. A location-independent, cost-efficient and rapid testing for COVID-19 of a broad part of the (world) population is needed to effectively monitor the spread of COVID-19 and to enable the consequences of disease control through targeted lifecycle management by health authorities.
How far is research on the use of vocal biomarkers for early detection of respiratory diseases?
Vocal biomarkers have the potential to revolutionize diagnostics through their accuracy, speed and cost efficiency and are currently being tested especially in the field of mental diseases as well as physical diseases such as Parkinson’s or coronary artery disease. Research is at a early stage, but evidence is mounting that especially a number of mental and physical conditions have an influence on tone of voice, choice of words and sounds.

The detection of respiratory diseases using vocal biomarkers is gaining momentum now we as scientists are just beginning to understand how we can use vocal biomarkers and artificial intelligence to hear beyond the human ear. But one thing is already clear: the approach is highly disruptive and might have an incredible impact on health care and pandemic prevention around the world and especially in countries with underdeveloped health systems.

The presented approach uses the most modern, widespread and publicly accepted everyday technologies for the early detection of viral diseases.

How can I donate my Vocal Biomarkers?
It’s quite simple:

  1. Fill out our quick COVID-19 Symptom Check (30 seconds)
  2. Take the Vocal Biomarker Test
  3. Click Submit. 

Done. 🙂

 

How is my health data handled?
Your personal health information and the vocal biomarkers you submit will be handled securely. All data collected on our servers is encrypted end-to-end and collected in compliance with the data protection standards of the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union.

We will anonymize the data and just use it with the intention to conduct research and translate this work to patients. You can find all details clearly and understandably in our data protection declaration. If you have any questions, please contact our team.

How much time is required?
In the first step, you just need about 2 minutes to donate your vocal biomarkers.

If you are interested in participating in a longer clinical trial, you can indicate this in your data donation. Depending on your previous illnesses and symptoms, we then will invite you to join our clinical study. We have structured the trial as a 4 week longitudinal study and we estimated it will take roughly 15-20 minutes of your time contributing for the COVID-19 research from home with nothing more than your smartphone.

What is the current status of the study?

In order to find out whether AI-supported symptom-related early detection is promising, we plan to record approx. 500,000 audio samples from approx. 50,000 corona patients and correlate them to secured COVID-19 testing in a study from April to July 2020 using a self-test app based on smartphones. 

 

The study is conducted under scientific standards in cooperation with medical universities and research institutions* and can roughly be divided into three parts:

1) Labelling of a large number of vocal biomarkers from symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects via this website (non-clinical part),

2) Testing and analysis of the correlation of vocal biomarkers to classical diagnostic test procedures in the context of a retrospective review of the course of disease under clinical conditions (clinical part),

3) Conducting a registry study to examine in detail the results that vocal and digital biomarkers provided us with.

 

Should this be the case, commercially available smartphones would be able to predict probabilities for corona virus disease, to direct biomarker-based well-founded suspected cases to the best possible location and to better locate patients in the life cycle of the disease.

 

*If you are working in a clinical institute and can imagine a research cooperation, please contact us.

How can the "VOBI" algorithm be used to detect COVID-19?
For the transfer of the research results we  develop and continuously train a sophisticated Healthcare Intelligence Software, that can understand vocal biomarkers to detect respiratory diseases.  

The development and study are conducted under strong scientific, data protection and ethical standards in cooperation with medical universities and research institutions.

 

*If you are working in a clinical institute and can imagine a research cooperation, please contact us.

How can I partner with the project?
We’re seeking collaborations with individuals, nonprofits, academic facilities, medical device companies and private donors to advance this initiative.

For Individuals – You can donate your voice – it just takes 2 minutes to contribute to our research. And: Please spread the word and share the website. 

For Nonprofits and Academic Facilities – If you are interested in a research cooperation with us, please let us know – we are always looking for research facilities for joint work. Furthermore you can forward the link to your mailing list and help us recruit participants. 

For Corporation/ Companies – If you are a company looking to help us in our effort to provide solution to COVID-19, please reach out to us by filling out the contact form at the bottom of this web page.

For Private Donors or Foundations – If you’re interested to financially support our work or contribute in other ways, please reach out to us. We are also currently looking to test the approach in collaboration with research institutions in countries and regions with underdeveloped healthcare systems. 

If you’re interested in any of these areas or have other ways to work together, just reach out to us on the contact form at the bottom of this page and we’ll get back to you.

The Team

Philip Mertes

Philip Mertes

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Hendrik Kleinwächter

Hendrik Kleinwächter

Chief technical Officer (CTO)

Prof. Dr. med. Gerd-Dieter Burchard

Prof. Dr. med. Gerd-Dieter Burchard

Medical Advisory Board Member and infectious diseases and tropical medicine

Dirk Simon

Dirk Simon

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Dr. Wolfgang-Paul Tigges

Dr. Wolfgang-Paul Tigges

Chief Medical Officer (CMO)

PD Dr. Dr. Jan Dirk Raguse

PD Dr. Dr. Jan Dirk Raguse

Medical Advisory Board Member and oral & maxillofacial surgeon

We are an multidisciplinary team of medical experts, scientists, software engineers, data scientists and entrepreneurs and have teamed up together in the Venture Studio 202xHealth Labs to envision and validate the future of healthcare and longevityWe are driven by the mission to enable humanity to live longer and healthier, shape the future of our healthcare system and democratize high-performance medicine through the power of innovation, science and entrepreneurship across the world. 

We deeply believe, that the innovation location Germany is thanks (and despite) its high standards in health and data security predestined to become a pioneer in the most important fields of innovation in healthcare. Our goal is to unite a large number of people from business, science, politics and administration who want to actively enable and shape the future and be part of the solution.

 

 

 

 

 

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You have questions or suggestions? Please feel free to contact us!

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Donate your Vocal Biomarkers to help detect COVID-19

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