Hastings Principal Investigator: Vardit Ravitsky

Funder: National Institutes of Health

Start date: September 2023

Voice is increasingly being recognized as a biomarker of health, but it raises important issues related to patient privacy, ethical and fair representation of populations, and clinical accuracy.

This project will integrate the use of voice as biomarker of health in clinical care by generating a substantial multi-institutional, ethically sourced, and diverse voice database linked to a broad range of health biomarkers. The goal is to build predictive models to assist in screening, diagnosis, and treatment of five disease categories for which voice changes have been associated with specific diseases: 1. Vocal Pathologies (laryngeal cancers, vocal fold paralysis, benign laryngeal lesions), 2. Neurological and Neurodegenerative Disorders (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, stroke, ALS), 3. Mood and Psychiatric Disorders (depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders), 4. Respiratory disorders (pneumonia, COPD, heart failure, OSA), and 5. Pediatric diseases (autism, speech delay)

Learn more about the project here.