Q&A: research into sound-collecting app to aid respiratory disease diagnosis

A recording of a cough, the noise of a person's breathing or even the sound of their voice could be used to help diagnose patients with Covid-19 in the future, according to Professor Cecilia Mascolo, co-director of the centre for mobile, wearable systems and augmented intelligence at the University of Cambridge, UK. Prof. Mascolo has developed a sound-collecting app to help train machine learning algorithms to detect the tell-tale sounds of coronavirus infection. Created as part of a project called EAR, she hopes it might eventually lead to new ways of diagnosing respiratory diseases and help in the global fight against coronavirus. The human body makes noises all of the time. Our heart, lungs and digestive system all make noises and they can tell us a lot.