Artificial Intelligence App Promises Hope for ALS Patients
Summary
It will be cheaper, faster and well get more accurate assessments.The app developed by Modality, a San Francisco digital startup, features a virtual agent, Tina, who guides patients through the assessment. Using a virtual agent is a cutting-edge method of obtaining speech data information while engaging patients in an immersive user experience.The advantages of the app are five-fold: Disease-related changes can be detected earlier and with more precision, which will facilitate a faster diagnosis along with monitoring the diseases progression Testing of new drugs used to reduce the symptoms and advancement of the disease can be improved Automated assessments can be self-driven and administered remotely; a patient receives a standard and consistent instruction set and can do so from home Decreases burden on provider time because the test is administered without a clinician Offers non-judgmental interaction, which can be helpful for individuals with comorbid mental health challengesThe demand for accurate, low-cost, and remote speech assessments is surging from multiple sectors including health care providers, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions. Our aim is to make these complex assessments easy to use, accessible, equitable, and accurate for patients, clinicians, and researchers.The potential implications of this groundbreaking app include: Reducing misdiagnosed and delayed diagnoses Increasing accuracy and accessibility, while reducing the cost of clinical care Improving clinical trials of new experimental drugsThe three-year grant, which began in June 2022, is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, an agency of the National Institutes of Health. The academic-industry partnerships are intended to bring innovation out of the lab and into the world and, thereby, improve healthcare delivery while spurring economic growth.I jumped at the opportunity to work with Modality, said Dr. Green. The members of the team have unique and extensive histories of developing AI speech applications and commercial interest in implementing this technology into mainstream health care and clinical trials.