German researchers study the effectiveness of COVID-19 detection with Vocal Biomarkers. Donate your Vocals and help fight COVID-19

Press Release: Vocals for Science launched

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14. April 2020

With Vocals for Science, German researchers study the effectiveness of COVID-19 detection with Vocal Biomarkers

Vocal biomarkers have an amazing potential in reforming diagnostics through their accuracy, speed and cost-effectiveness. An interdisciplinary group of data scientists, medical experts and product managers from Germany are studying the correlation between respiratory diseases and vocal biomarkers like voice, breathing and coughing noises in Germany & Europe. The team is developing Artificial Intelligence algorithms and technique to correlate the voice with the symptoms of the COVID-19. On VocalsForScience.com you now can donate your Vocals to help fight COVID-19. Please see the press release below.

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Press Release (EN): Interdisciplinary team from Germany researches with “Vocals for Science” the effectiveness of early detection of COVID-19 based on speech, voice and breathing sounds and artificial intelligence

Göttingen/Hamburg: The COVID 19 pandemic subjects the health care system, the economy and individual liberties in our globalised and highly technological world to an unprecedented stress test. While the mobilisation of the health care system is underway, measures have been adopted in Germany and many other countries around the world, some of which are considerably restricting public life, in order to dramatically reduce the number of new infections.

An interdisciplinary team of data scientists, software developers, scientists and product managers from Göttingen and Hamburg are working on the early detection of respiratory viral diseases using Vocal Biomarkers on the occasion of COVID-19, a deep-tech future topic that could fundamentally change the way we detect COVID-19. The goal of the research team is to find out to what extent speech, voice and breathing sounds can predict the viral disease using commercially available smartphones. To this end, the project team is developing an algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to recognize patterns in audio samples that would be hidden from the human ear. On the VOCALSforSCIENCE.com platform, people from all over the world who wish to contribute to research leave anonymous voice, speech and breath samples. At the same time, a clinical study will be conducted to validate the results under laboratory conditions.

Vocal Biomarkers for COVID-19 detection

“Vocal biomarkers have the potential to revolutionize diagnostics through their accuracy, speed and cost-effectiveness. Evidence is mounting that a number of diseases have an impact on tone of voice, choice of words and sounds. The method is highly innovative and could enable the location-independent, cost-efficient and rapid testing for COVID-19 of a broad part of the (world) population,” explains co-founder Philip Mertes. The German government supports the team in the so-called Solution Enabler Programme. In addition, government organisations and start-ups have been conducting research on this future-oriented topic in cooperation with scientific research institutions in the USA and Israel.

Modelling of Pandemic Scenarios in the Future

In the long term, the approach could be used for early detection of pandemic scenarios, improvement of lifecycle management and simplification of the tracking of infection chains by health authorities. “We will learn as a society to live with COVID-19. In view of the containment measures, there is a need for a considerably improved data basis that allows information about the spread of the disease in the population,” explains computer scientist Dirk Simon.

Those interested in supporting the research project with a donation of voice, speech and breathing sounds can take a two-minute test at VocalsForScience.com and find out more about the research project.

Press Release in German Language:

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About Vocals For Science

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.

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.

Donate your Vocals & Learn more

About the Team behind

Vocals for Science is a research and software development project operated by an multidisciplinary team of medical experts, scientists, software engineers, data scientists and entrepreneurs that have teamed up together in the Venture Studio 202xHealth Labs to envision and validate the future of healthcare and longevity.

"Vocal Biomarkers have the potential to revolutionize COVID-19 diagnostics through its accuracy, speed and cost efficiency. 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.

– Philip Mertes, Co-Founder of Vocals for Science