As an asthma and immunology specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, I see many people struggle with asthma, and hospitalizations at three times the state average.
Poor construction quality in buildings, higher rates of smoking, and unhealthy air quality all play a role in the higher hospitalization rates. To better manage their symptoms, patients need clear, understandable information that is easy to access.
So, my colleagues and I created two new smartphone apps to help—ASTHMAXcel for adults and ASTHMAXcel Adventures for pediatric patients. The apps combine asthma education with games that challenge the user’s asthma knowledge and encourage healthier behaviors. After two months of using the app, an increase in asthma control and reductions in the number of emergency department visits and hospitalizations were reported. Additionally, fewer patients needed steroids to control symptoms in the following months.
As COVID-19 infections and deaths rose in the Bronx, we wondered if we could leverage some of our experience from developing ASTHMAXcel to fight this horrific virus. Though, COVID-19 poses a different problem than asthma. While ASTHMAXcel was developed to educate users on treatments for a chronic condition, one of the biggest challenges in fighting COVID-19 is early detection of the disease. Working to contain the virus is critical to saving lives, but we still lack screening tools that are effective and accessible.
Enter Sonde Health, a vocal biomarker technology company that developed an algorithm to detect health conditions from the sound of your voice. Early research shows their smartphone app can pick up respiratory symptoms from a six-second voice sample.
Though it sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, we were already familiar with the use of vocal biomarkers to detect respiratory symptoms of asthma. We saw a promising technology that could be evaluated in a clinical trial.
In September 2020, we started our research looking at patients. We:
- Provided a polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) test — the most accurate COVID-19 test available.
- Asked our patients to give voice samples once a day in the Sonde One app for two weeks.
- Gathered voice samples from patients that were not infected with COVID-19, so we had a control group during the same time period.
Our goal is to use these voice samples to confirm if the existing vocal biomarker technology is effective at identifying the respiratory symptoms of COVID-19. If successful, this technology could be a quick and simple screening to identify people who have COVID-19 symptoms.
Vocal screening could help contain virus spread by getting tests to the right people earlier and fast-tracking doctor appointments. Further, if this trial is successful, it represents a glimpse into what the future of health screenings — for any number of conditions—may look like.
In the Bronx, we hope app-based tools for asthma, COVID-19, and other respiratory conditions can reduce unnecessary hospitalizations. Did you ever think there would be an app for that?
Dr. Sunit Jariwala is an associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the director of Clinical & Research Innovation at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY.