Voice algorithms spot Parkinson's disease
 

From the BBC:

Voice algorithms spot Parkinson's disease

" ... mathematician Max Little has come up with a non-invasive, cheap test which he hopes will offer a quick new way to identify [Parkinson's] disease."

"Mr Little has discovered that Parkinson's symptoms can be detected by computer algorithms that analyse voice recordings."

"He is aiming to record up to 10,000 voices and has set up local numbers in 10 countries around the world. In the UK the number is 01865 521168."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18427851

An excellent idea.

If it can also measure progression accurately, this will give a very useful tool for clinical trials: ring up every day to get a "score". With enough people, you'd know within days whether the treatment was working.

John

Web site with national telephone numbers (US, Canada etc.):

http://www.parkinsonsvoice.org/index.php

John

Thanks, John! This sounds really promising. I will share on social media and in a few other forums.

Laura

Making the call is easy. You get an ID number which you can use at their website to request feedback.

I've just received an email from them:

The good news: >3800 calls.

The bad news: feedback is delayed.

John

The PVI was featured on Fox News :

Could speech test help detect Parkinson's?

The Parkinson's Voice project has now had over 5,000 replies.

A paper by Tsanas et al. [1] gives more details. For instance, with their system "UPDRS can be estimated to within about 3.5 points difference from the clinicians’ assessment, which is clinically useful given that the inter-rater variability for UPDRS can be as high as 4-5 UPDRS points."

I think, however, it will be better than what that implies. This is because what we really need is a measure of the severity of our Parkinson's, per se, not an estimate of our UPDRS score. My hunch is that the quality of one's voice reflects deeper, more visceral processes better.

[1] "Using the cellular mobile telephone network to remotely monitor Parkinson's disease symptom severity"
Athanasios Tsanas*, Max A. Little, Patrick E. McSharry, Senior Member, IEEE, Lorraine O.Ramig
http://www.maxlittle.net/publication...ular_updrs.pdf

John

twins
 

I have an identical twin who does not have PD. We both submitted our voices for comparison and they were pretty excited about it!

As of 16th August PVI had received 11,217 calls (US, 6601; UK, 2097; France 1337; Canada, 754; ...).

In my view this is an exciting initiative. It's getting huge numbers of people taking part. With these numbers its benefits should go way beyond diagnosis. As I understand it, when fully developed, the technique should be able to give a Parkinson's score. This should allow very rapid clinical trials, e.g. ring in to give a baseline, take curcumin for a week, ring in an end-point call, a day later have the results.

So, if you haven't already done so, please call in.

John

Here's a transcript of "THE NEXT LIST Detecting Parkinson's Disease by Voice Aired December 2, 2012 - 14:00 ET " on CNN.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../02/nl.01.html

The most interesting bit is:

"LITTLE: This sort of high-frequency data about how people's symptoms change over time has not readily been available for this. This is a new frontier in exploring how individuals respond to treatment to different drugs. And the value of this, this has enormous value in clinical practice"

His approach offers so much more than just diagnosis.

John

Huffington Post article by Max Little:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-li...b_2545128.html

John