February 28, 2023 – Sonde Health, a health technology company committed to bringing accessible health monitoring to everyone, in conjunction with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Frontotemporal Disorders (FTD) Unit, has been selected by the Massachusetts Artificial Intelligence and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging & Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC) to lead a pilot study focused on leveraging vocal biomarkers for remote detection and monitoring of mild cognitive impairment in the home environment.
Funded by MassAITC and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the project is part of a $1.7 million grant to explore the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies for in-home care. Specifically, it will evaluate the feasibility of obtaining voice recordings of older individuals in the home environment that can be used to longitudinally monitor speech and memory functions.
The project will enroll 50 adults from the FTD Unit. Participants will be ages 55 and above and represent a range of cognitive function from normal cognition through subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and mild dementia. The longitudinal study will examine the potential of Sonde’s vocal biomarker platform to monitor and detect changes in cognitive function for individuals at home. Participants will record 10-15 different voice samples and responses to cognitive assessments both in the laboratory setting and from their personal smartphones at home. Voice recordings will be analyzed for acoustic features that correlate with mental status, which are expected to provide insights into how vocal biomarkers can be used as an effective tool for tracking cognitive health over time.
The pilot is part of MassAITC’s larger mission to realize the goal of aging at home through interdisciplinary research. It will serve as an important reference data set to further test and validate vocal biomarkers relevant to the detection or monitoring of cognitive impairment. This study builds on several current Sonde projects focused on testing cognitive biomarkers, including a multi-year strategic partnership with GN Group to research and develop commercial vocal biomarkers for MCI.