Detecting Parkinson’s via phone call

A new technology that aims to detect Parkinson’s disease through a simple phone call is now being tested.

While at Oxford University, mathematician Max Little developed an algorithm to detect voice disorders. When he tried those algorithms to detect Parkinson’s disease, he did so with about 86% accuracy, The Huffington Post reports.

The technology, dubbed the The Parkinson’s Voice Initiative, is in the process of analysing 10,000 voices collected using the standard telephone network.

“This incredible and unique dataset will tell us whether it is possible to use something as ubiquitous as the telephone to detect and monitor the disease,” Mr Little writes.

The Parkinson’s project has occupied Mr Little for the past seven years.

“I fell into it almost by accident. I can only imagine what it is like to suffer from a neurological disease. But like so many of us, I have a friend who is affected: Jan Stripling, who used to be a virtuoso ballet dancer,” Mr Little says.

“I thought it particularly cruel for him to suffer from Parkinson’s, having lived a life dedicated to the performance of the most elegant, controlled movements. But actually, he tells me that it is the little things we all take for granted – such as buttoning a shirt – that frustrate him most now,” he adds.

While Mr Little admits he is not a health care professional, he recalls he was fortunate enough to have met someone who was involved in a medical research project into Parkinson’s, which had recorded the voices of around 50 people weekly.

“As it happens, although I don’t know much about neurological disorders, I do know a lot about the voice and sound,” he says.

In his PhD at Oxford, he developed mathematical algorithms for detecting voice disorders, and when  these algorithms were tried on Parkinson’s voices, he and his team were able to detect those with the disease, with around 86% accuracy.

“So, for me, it was the chance discovery that voice is affected as much by Parkinson’s as limb movements, that set me on the path of trying to detect and monitor Parkinson’s using voice recordings,” he says.

In collaboration with one of his students, he worked for several years and now has algorithms that, in the lab, reportedly reach about 99% accuracy in detecting the disease.

Somewhere between four and six million people worldwide suffer from Parkinson’s disease.

Watch Mr Little’s TED talk on The Parkinson’s Voice Initiative.