Sonde Health, a health technology company committed to bringing accessible health monitoring to everyone, in conjunction with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Frontotemporal Disorders Unit, has been selected by the Massachusetts Artificial Intelligence and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging & Alzheimer’s Disease to lead a pilot study focused on leveraging vocal biomarkers for remote detection and monitoring of mild cognitive impairment in the home environment.
Funded by MassAITC and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the project is part of a $1.7 million grant to explore the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies for in-home care. Specifically, it will evaluate the feasibility of obtaining voice recordings of older individuals in the home environment that can be used to longitudinally monitor speech and memory functions.
“Nearly 90% of older adults wish to stay in their homes for as long as possible. Digital technologies, and digital biomarkers in particular, have great potential to support this shift,” said David Liu, CEO of Sonde Health. “By monitoring cognitive health from afar through vocal biomarkers, Sonde’s technology could help facilitate this desire to ‘age in place,’ offering these patients the ability to remain in a familiar environment without sacrificing quality care.”
The project will enroll 50 adults from the FTD Unit. Participants will be ages 55 and above and represent a range of cognitive function from normal cognition through subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and mild dementia. The longitudinal study will examine the potential for Sonde’s vocal biomarker platform to monitor and detect changes in cognitive function for individuals at home. Participants will record 10-15 different voice samples and responses to cognitive assessments both in the laboratory setting and from their personal smartphones at home. Voice recordings will be analyzed for acoustic features that correlate with mental status, which are expected to provide insights into how vocal biomarkers can be used as an effective tool for tracking cognitive health over time.
SOURCE: Businesswire