On the one hand, using voice as a pre-screening test in places where the normal screening test is too expensive to administer routinely seems like a great thing. i.e.: Read this paragraph to the machine, and we’ll figure out whether it’s worth actually testing you for T2DM, Parkinson’s, stomach cancer, lung cancer, etc, etc. If that substantially reduces the number of tests administered without making too many false negatives, then you can really improve health in some very poor areas.
This data set is definitely not going to give that. It’s not even particularly compelling evidence that it’s possible. It is, IMO, compelling enough to study further. Bigger sample sizes, fewer than 84 recordings over 2 weeks. It kind of looks like p-value chasing, and running a bigger study would answer that.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
This seems like a solution in search of a problem. A finger-pick a1c test is about $30 (probably cheaper in reality, but that’s what they try to bill to insurance at least), and is an extremely accurate way to diagnose both diabetes and pre-diabetes.
I would think Parkinson’s disease or other diagnoses that don’t have simple tests and require a skilled exam from a neurologist or something would be a better match for this kind of tech.
WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 10 months ago
At 10 cents per polio vaccine, there are still places where administering them is non-negligible because it's not the cost of the test itself that's an issue. Granted, this probably isn't good enough to make a difference, but if you could get tested just with a cell phone with Internet access without needing to physically ship anything not need a medical professional at the site, it probably could make a big difference in some areas. Granted, those are places where getting medical treatment afterwards is probably hard but at least dealing with it via dietary choice, when that luxury is an option, may help.