The wearable technology industry appears to have hit a plateau, with companies struggling to innovate further with new sensors. Although advancements in microfluidics and stretchable electronics have shown promise, these technologies have yet to make a significant impact in the consumer market. However, Klick Labs is taking a different approach, focusing on voice recordings as a potential breakthrough in health monitoring.
Klick Labs is exploring the potential of using voice recordings from smartphones to monitor chronic health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Although it may sound far-fetched, their research has shown encouraging results, and they are making strides toward making this technology a reality.
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Klick Labs’ Innovative Approach to Blood Pressure Monitoring
Klick Labs has developed an app that uses voice recordings to detect signs of chronically high blood pressure. The app utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze voice samples and identify potential health concerns. “Voice technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, making it more accessible and affordable, particularly for underserved populations,” says Jaycee Kaufman, a research scientist at Klick Labs.
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The Global Impact of Hypertension
Hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure, affects approximately 1.28 billion adults globally, with nearly half of them unaware they have the condition, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). If left untreated, hypertension can lead to severe health problems such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, vision loss, and heart disease. Timely diagnosis and management of hypertension are crucial, but accessibility to testing can be limited, especially in remote areas with inadequate healthcare infrastructure.
While some high-end smartwatches, like those from Samsung, offer blood pressure monitoring features, their high price point can be a barrier for many people. Klick Labs’ solution, using widely available smartphones, could address these challenges and provide a cost-effective and accessible way to monitor blood pressure.
How Voice Recordings Are Used to Detect Hypertension
Klick Labs’ research involved analyzing voice samples from 245 participants, collecting recordings six times per day over two weeks. The team developed gender-specific predictive models and utilized an innovative acoustic analysis method to detect hypertension. According to their findings, the app was able to detect high blood pressure in women with 84% accuracy and in men with 77% accuracy.
Yan Fossat, senior vice president of Klick Labs, explains that the system does not require any prior calibration, which eliminates a common obstacle in health monitoring technologies. Moreover, the voice recordings were collected in an unsupervised environment, adding to the system’s practicality and ease of use.
The app analyzes factors like speech energy distribution, pitch variability, and the sharpness of sound changes to correlate them with elevated blood pressure levels. While the app is not yet available to the public, it is undergoing further refinement to improve its performance and reliability.
The Path to Commercialization
Fossat revealed that Klick Labs is working on distributing the application programming interface (API) keys as they move toward commercialization. The app is designed to be platform-agnostic, meaning it will work on both iOS and Android devices, making it accessible to a broader audience.
To bring the app to market, Klick Labs will need to navigate regulatory approvals. Fossat says that they plan to submit the app for regulatory clearance as a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) Class I product, which poses the lowest risk under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. Unlike other medical devices, this app will not be integrated with hardware, simplifying the approval process.
While the app is not meant to replace medical-grade tools like sphygmomanometers, it can serve as an early detection system, alerting users when they need to seek professional medical advice. Fossat compares it to how Apple markets the health features on its Apple Watch, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib) detection.
Challenges and Future Directions
Despite the promising results, there are still challenges to overcome before the app can be deployed on a large scale. One limitation of the current study is the lack of diversity among the participants. Most subjects were from a single ethnic group, and the number of hypertensive cases was relatively small. Klick Labs aims to expand their research to include a more diverse population with varying ethnic backgrounds and a broader range of hypertension symptoms.
Another challenge is reducing the number of voice recordings needed for an accurate analysis. To achieve this, Klick Labs plans to gather more data to train the AI models more effectively. Additionally, some level of user training is required to capture the necessary acoustic data, which could present an obstacle for widespread adoption.
To address these challenges, the team is exploring advanced solutions like deep neural networks. By improving the accuracy and efficiency of the app, they hope to make it more user-friendly and accessible.
A Significant Leap in Health Monitoring
The idea of using a smartphone and voice recordings to analyze chronic high blood pressure is a major step forward in health technology. By eliminating the need for expensive wearables, Klick Labs’ approach could provide a non-invasive, cost-effective, and widely accessible solution for millions of people at risk for hypertension. With the right support from health authorities and commercial partners, this innovation has the potential to make a substantial impact on global health.