In the quest to turn voice data into a depression screening tool, one startup looks to India
By Rebecca Robbins
This screen capture of an audio spectrogram represents the sound of the Sonde Health CEO's voice. Sonde is analyzing voice samples to help develop a smartphone app that could be used to help diagnose depression. Sonde
In the hunt for clues to help diagnose disease, the sound of a patient's voice has long been seen as a potential goldmine. Now, startups are racing to refine and test these technologies — and along the way hitting up against big questions about how they should be validated and regulated.
One of the players is Sonde Health, a Boston startup that is developing a smartphone app that would listen to the sound of your voice and use that to tell you if you should get screened for depression and other conditions. That quest has sent the company around the world collecting voice data — including to India, where it's running an unusual human subjects study that's recorded the voices of 10,000 patient volunteers.
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