Google AI model helps diagnose diseases by hearing sounds

Google has made a scientific breakthrough by developing an AI model called “HeAR” that helps diagnose diseases by hearing sounds. HeAR refers to Health Acoustic Representations. It can revolutionize disease diagnosis, especially in examining cough sounds.

Diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and tuberculosis (TB) may be diagnosed earlier with more precision using this advanced AI model.

For a long time, the scientific community has ignored sound in medical diagnosis. However, scientists can now access insightful information in bioacoustic signals through advanced AI technology.

*HeAR helps researchers detect disease based on coughs*

Bioacoustic signals (BAS) are biological sounds used to diagnose diseases. HeAR can analyze speech, breathing patterns, and coughing to diagnose diseases.

It uses massive datasets to identify minor sound patterns associated with particular medical diseases. The 300 million audio recordings in the large dataset that HeAR trained on, include cough sounds. So, it enables model to identify minor characteristics that the human ear may miss.

HeAR also offers a painless, affordable health screening method by identifying early indicators of preparatory disorders with the ability to analyze these sounds.

Google AI model HeAR helps diagnose diseases by analyzing sound characteristics of cough. These characteristics include sound’s frequency, duration, and strength.

Hence, it can detect patterns indicating specific diseases by comparing these characteristics with those in its extensive dataset.

For example, the lack of accessible diagnostic equipment usually results in misdiagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). It is a disease that continues to present a serious health risk in many world regions.

*HeAR helps diagnose TB and COPD diseases by analyzing cough sounds*

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The potential of HeAR to identify tuberculosis from a single cough could transform the diagnosis of this disease, particularly in low-resource areas.

Google is not operating this model alone. It collaborates with organizations such as Partnership and Salcit Technologies, an India-based respiratory healthcare company.

Partnership and Salcit Technologies have already integrated HeAR into its AI-powered application, Swaasa. It diagnoses lung health through cough analysis. This collaboration helps early detection of TB while offering a life-saving model for people.