Last week, I wrote about how technology can make you mad!
Last weekend, I was also watching TV, and saw something amazing that I had to write about! It is an amazing application of technology - an innovation that is hard to conceive due to its simplicity!
Technology rocks!
Watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta's The Next List, I was riveted to hear about Max Little, a genius mathematician from the U.K. He is responsible for what I consider an amazing medical innovation.
Max Little is not a doctor, he's a mathematician. A really smart mathematician!
Max applied audio analysis techniques to create a test of a 10-second "aaah" recording to detect Parkinsons - with 99% accuracy!
The muscles of the vocal chords are impacted just like other muscles in the body due to Parkinsons. Vocal aberrations (possibly imperceptible to the human ear) can be detected by audio analysis. Important - this can likely happen even before the more obvious symptoms kick in! Early detection.
Not only is it an almost 0-cost, consumer-friendly way (call on the phone?) to test for presence of the symptoms of the disease, it is also likely the only tangible, metrics-driven way to track the progression of the condition!
The idea makes sense ... now! But conceiving it, and actually getting it to work in this domain is as out-of-the-box as it gets!!
As out-of-the-voice-box, I mean!
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