Download PDF
Parkinson's Voice Initiative: Detecting Parkinson's Disease Through Voice Analysis
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Device Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Telecommunications
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Onsite Human Safety Management
- Speech Recognition
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system affecting around six million people today, with projections indicating a rise to almost 10 million by 2030. The Parkinson's Voice Initiative, a team of mathematicians and clinicians, aimed to develop a low-cost test to identify patients with Parkinson's symptoms using voice recordings. The challenge was to accurately record phone calls from around the world, analyze the voice fluctuations, tremors, and other symptoms, and compare them against sample sets of both Parkinson's sufferers and healthy individuals. The team needed a robust solution that could handle large volumes of call data and ensure a high level of accuracy.
About The Customer
The Parkinson's Voice Initiative is a team of mathematicians and clinicians based in Cambridge, MA. The initiative was founded in 2012 by Max Little, a mathematician and TED fellow who has been analyzing the human voice from a mathematical perspective since studying for his PhD at Oxford University in 2003. The initiative aims to use voice recordings to detect Parkinson's disease, potentially improving treatment management for those affected. The team developed a set of computer algorithms that can analyze fluctuations, tremors, and other symptoms in voice recordings, effectively detecting the presence of symptoms associated with the disease.
The Solution
The team developed a set of computer algorithms that could analyze symptoms in voice recordings. They used Twilio, a cloud communications platform, to record and analyze calls made by patients with Parkinson's. Participants were given a local Twilio phone number to call from any voice call enabled device. After a brief recorded prompt, participants submitted around 20-30 seconds of steady 'ahhh' voice recording. Twilio sent this data to Parkinson's Voice's programmable PHP-based platform, which collected, analyzed, and stored the recordings. The initiative also collated and contrasted this voice data with self-reported symptom data provided by health-focused social network, PatientsLikeMe, to verify symptom predictions based on the voice recordings. Twilio's robust system allowed for a 100% capture rate, ensuring the accuracy needed for the initiative.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Cloud Solution for Energy Management Platform-Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric required a cloud solution for its energy management platform to manage high computational operations, which were essential for catering to client requirements. As the business involves storage and analysis of huge amounts of data, the company also needed a convenient and scalable storage solution to facilitate operations efficiently.
Case Study
Leveraging the IoT to Gain a Competitive Edge in International Competition
Many large manufacturers in and outside Japan are competing for larger market share in the same space, expecting a growing demand for projectors in the areas of entertainment, which requires glamor and strong visual performance as well as digital signage that can attract people’s attention. “It is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate ourselves with stand-alone hardware products,” says Kazuyuki Kitagawa, Director of Service & Support at Panasonic AVC Networks. “In order for Panasonic to grow market share and overall business, it is essential for us to develop solutions that deliver significant added value.” Panasonic believes projection failure and quality deterioration should never happen. This is what and has driven them to make their projectors IoT-enabled. More specifically, Panasonic has developed a system that collects data from projectors, visualizes detailed operational statuses, and predicts issues and address them before failure occurs. Their projectors are embedded with a variety of sensors that measure power supply, voltage, video input/ output signals, intake/exhaust air temperatures, cooling fan operations, and light bulb operating time. These sensors have been used to make the projector more intelligent, automatically suspending operation when the temperature rises excessively, and automatically switching light bulbs. Although this was a great first step, Panasonic projectors were still not equipped with any capability to send the data over a network.