Israeli startup Healthymize will be begin piloting its chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) detection app in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2018. The app, which operates in the background, detects COPD flare-ups by recording a patient’s breathing, voice and speech patterns when talking on her smartphone and uploading the data to the cloud for a baseline comparison with previously recorded speech and breathing patterns.
If the Healthymize app detects any indication of a COPD flare-up, such as changes in breathing rate or pitch of the patient’s voice during a call, it alerts the patient and her physician. Early detection of flare ups allows a physician to begin treatment immediately, rather than wait for the patient to come in for an appointment or seek treatment in the emergency room.
Most COPD patients typically wait days before contacting their physician when symptoms of a flare-up emerge, says Healthymize CEO Shady Hassan, who is also an attending physician of internal medicine at the Carmel Medical Center in Israel. The longer a patient waits to seek treatment during a COPD flare-up, the greater the risk of hospitalization. Direct medical costs attributable to COPD are projected to increase to an estimated $49 billion annually by 2020, up from $32.1 billion in 2010, according to the American College of Chest Physicians.
“Diseases like COPD affect a person’s ability to breath and we felt that technology could be used effectively to detect symptoms of a flare-up and start treatment sooner,” Hassan says.
To establish a baseline of their voice, speech and breathing patterns when talking, a patient opens the Heathymize app and speaks into her phone for least 20 seconds. The app captures various metrics around the patient’s speech and breathing patterns. During each subsequent conversation on the patient’s phone, the Healthymize app tracks the patient’s speech and breathing metrics.
“The conversation itself is not recorded,” says Hassan. “The app only extracts the features of the voice and breathing patterns.”
In addition to piloting the app in the United States early next year, Healthymize will also begin testing the app in the United Kingdom during the first quarter of 2018. Both pilots are scheduled to last six months.
While COPD is the initial disease to be tackled by Heathlymize, the company, which is currently raising seed funding, envisions applying its technology to detect flare-ups of other diseases that affect speech and breathing patterns, such as asthma, lung infections and even heart failure, Hassan says.
The company is also looking to partner with other health companies offering monitoring for chronic diseases to integrate its technology into the monitoring solution. Long-term, Hassan says the goal is to have the Healthymize app prescribed to patients and be integrated into voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant services, such as Amazon Echo.
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