OSCAR Project – Digital tool that detects COVID-19 infections through voice
Did you know there’s a brand new innovative technological tool that can help identify respiratory diseases, including a potentially COVID-19 infection? Thanks to OSCAR - Voice Screening of Corona virus, project that made this a reality. This project is led by NOVA Medical School, in consortium with NOS Inovação and the Associação Fraunhofer Portugal. Professor Nuno Neuparth, clinical partner in this project, integrated researcher at the Comprehensive Health Research Center HRC and Vice-Dean and Full Professor of Pathophysiology at NOVA Medical School, explained how it works and its main goals.
“The OSCAR project has born from an invitation made by Professor Hugo Gamboa from the Physics Department of NOVAFCT and the Associação Fraunhofer Portugal to participate in a consortium led by NOS Inovação and I accepted this challenge. The consortium needed a clinical partner to build a solid application for a Portugal 2020 call launched by the National Innovation Agency (ANI). The project aimed to “build” algorithms to identify patients with a positive RT-PCR test for SARS CoV-2, through voice and cough sounds. The second goal is to search, through artificial intelligence, for vocalization sounds characteristic of various respiratory diseases such as asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. This is how the OSCAR Project was built. This project consists of 2 phases. The first phase is aimed at building and validating COVID-19 recognition algorithms through the voice and cough sounds of people recruited from 4 centers where PCR analyses were carried out for the diagnosis of COVID-19. The second phase, now underway, intends to collect voice and cough sounds from people recruited from the general population who have made a PCR or antigen testing at diagnostic centers. At this stage the test results are obtained by self-report. People are invited to answer questions and record vocalization and coughing sounds through a website.”
The second phase of the OSCAR project is now underway and seeks to recruit volunteers to test this innovative digital tool. Give your contribution through: https://covid19.oscar-tech.pt/