Can the sound of a cough confirm if you have COVID-19?

The act of coughing has never felt so unnerving as it has since the novel Coronavirus took over our lives The stigma aside the anxiety that comes with being suspect has made the cough the evil of all flu symptoms Yet it has become the silver lining for a new exploratory project that hopes to build an Artificial Intelligence AI tool to assist in speedy screening of COVID19 patientsCough against COVID is a global datacrowdsourcing and openinnovation initiative by Mumbaibased nonprofit research outfit Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence that is seeing merit in analysing cough sounds to tackle the enormous pressure that most testing labs across the globe are experiencing due to rising number of COVID casesSince its launch in April the team has been encouraging people with symptoms and those who have tested positive for the disease to donate their cough sounds on coughagainstcovidorg so that they can train an AI to accurately recognise a COVID coughLed by Dr Rahul Panicker who is principal investigator of Cough against COVID and Chief Innovation and Research Officer at Wadhwani AI the initiative has gathered enough steam to receive collaborative support from Stanford University and Bill amp Melinda Gates FoundationIn an interview with midday Dr Panicker and Amrita Mahale product manager and strategy lead at Wadhwani AI explain why this project could be a positive step in improving COVID testing and diagnosisEdited excerpts from the interviewAmrita MahaleThe project is based on the assumption that the COVID cough has a unique sound Is there any evidence to prove thisDr Panicker There is evidence from past work that cough and voice have useful indicators for lung disease like pneumonia There is also preliminary evidence that sound may have useful signal for detecting COVID But this evidence is preliminary The key here is also to have enough useful signal for practical useMahale Whether AI will really be able to pick up some unique acoustic signatures of the cough from COVIDaffected patients is still an open questionWe have collaborated with several doctors AI researchers engineers and public health professionals whose expertise has been crucial to making this informed assumption How are you currently collecting cough sound data for the AIMahale We are collecting data at two levels One is our crowdsourcing platform coughagainstcovidorg Those with symptoms or who have been tested positive for the disease can record cough samples on their smartphone or a recording device and submit it to us In addition to the cough sounds one has to submit basic demographic details like age gender location as well as the symptoms that they are experiencing If you have the COVID19 test result onhand you can share that too Having contextual information such as the location of the person helps For instance if the person resides in a hotspot zone wed be able to surmise that she is more likely to be infectedWe are also doing a more focussed facilitybased data collection especially in India at testing centres and isolation wards And we have started some data collection already The more the data we have the better it is for the AI algorithm All our data will be anonymisedSafety is crucial to what we do As there is already a lot of stigma around coughing we have set guidelines about how these recordings need to be done If one is recording it on their own they need to make sure they are recording away from other people and that they disinfect any surface around them after that For facility data collection we have stricter protocols about distance from device when recording and that the recording be done in a separate area We have to be very careful How will the AI be trained to detect COVID soundsMahale The way the AI model works is that you have to give it input for it to tell you what the output is In the training phase which will begin simultaneously with data collection we train the algorithm with input cough sound data and output results eventually it learns to predict the output based on the given input This is how you build any AI productmdashyou first give it a lot of training data where there is input and output and eventually the algorithm learns the corelation between the twoDr Rahul Panicker If and when the AI is ready how will it help in screening of COVID patientsMahale The COVID19 testing strategy especially in India is currently very restrictive So if you have mild or moderate symptoms you cannot get tested unless you have had contact with a COVID19 positive case or if you live in a hotspot or containment area I think developing a selfscreening tool will help allay some of the anxiety that people are experiencing Once we get into the flu season during the monsoon we will have a large number of people with symptoms similar to COVID But even though you have a fever or cough your probability of having COVID is very low COVID shares symptoms with a large number of respiratory disorders So what we want to do is provide a lift It will give you a more accurate estimate of the probability of having COVID The screening results will narrow down to people who are more likely to be infected The focus here is on early screening and not diagnosis It has been about a month since this project took off What are the key challenges youve been facingDr Panicker The key challenge is working in the midst of a crisis Everything from official permissions to review on platforms like Google and Facebook to collecting data in clinical facilities takes longer as everyone is dealing with the crisis How has the response to the project been Are people receptive to the ideaMahale There is a lot of curiosity and excitement around the project A crowdsourced project is a citizens science project where people can contribute to scientific research We have already received a lot of crowdsourced data from the US and the UK where persons with mild moderate COVID symptoms are in home quarantine I think with the uncertainty around people want to do their bit and volunteerCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news