As well as body temperature, blood saturation, and heart frequency, researchers in São Paulo want to use a patient’s voice to diagnose Covid-19. The project is spearheaded by the Artificial Intelligence Center and backed by the São Paulo Research Support Foundation (Fapesp).
The new system is named “Spira,” a Portuguese acronym for “System for the Early Detection of Respiratory Insufficiency through Audio Analysis. It plans to use voice sounds to detect respiratory failure — one of the primary symptoms of coronavirus infections — and is being developed alongside Hospital das Clínicas, one of Brazil’s biggest public hospitals.
According to project coordinator Marcelo Finger, a professor at the University of São Paulo, the idea is to identify “whether a person has a level of respiratory failure that indicates the need for immediate medical care.” It works both for voice recordings obtained via smartphones or computer recordings.
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