Using the detection of changes in the voice, computer telephony hardware and software provider, Aculab is aiding the development of a quick and cost-effective way of objectively scoring the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the central nervous system currently affecting at least 6.3 million people around the world. Despite many years of research, there is still no known cure – there are no blood tests that can detect it and other tests are expensive, time-consuming and logistically difficult.
However, mathematician, Max Little believes he has developed a “quick, cheap and easy” way of detecting Parkinson’s disease. Little discovered that a person’s voice is affected as much by Parkinson’s as is limb movement, according to Aculab Cloud, so he invented a high-accuracy method of detecting symptoms through the analysis of voice recordings.
The analysis requires complicated algorithms, but capturing the voice clips for analysis is a very simple and quick process, Little said. Using Aculab Cloud, The Parkinson’s Voice Initiative – which aims to record 10,000 voices across the world – was able to purchase a range of telephone numbers and write an application that plays a number of pre-recorded questions and exercises for the caller to complete. In turn, these responses are recorded and stored. It takes on average three minutes for the caller to complete the survey.
Little said he became interested in understanding voice from a mathematical perspective while he was studying for a Ph.D. at Oxford University in 2003.
“I was looking for a practical application of my research and I found it in analyzing voice disorders, for example, when someone’s voice has broken down from over-use or after surgery on the vocal folds,” Little said. “It didn’t occur to me originally that people with Parkinson’s and other movement disorders could also be detected in the same way.”
As of this writing, the Parkinson’s Voice Initiative already achieved 20 percent of its goal of recording 10,000 voices with the help of Aculab Cloud, according to Faye McClenahan, head of strategic marketing at Aculab.
“We are very pleased to be contributing towards such an important study,” McClenahan said. “With so many people affected by Parkinson’s, it’s likely we all know someone who could benefit from the results of this project, which is a good example of the breadth of applications for which the Aculab Cloud telephony platform can be used.”
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
