Can Your Cough Diagnose Disease? Google Thinks So

Is it time to trust your smartphone more than your doctor for a diagnosis?

Google is leading a new frontier in healthcare with its AI-driven bioacoustics technology, which listens to human sounds to detect early signs of diseases like tuberculosis (TB).

Teaming up with Indian startup Salcit Technologies, Google trained its AI model, HeAR, on 300 million audio samples, including coughs and breathing patterns, to identify respiratory illnesses. This technology, embedded in smartphones, offers a low-cost screening tool for remote populations, especially in countries like India where TB remains a significant health challenge.

Despite the promise, challenges persist in integrating this tech into routine clinical practices and ensuring accurate recordings in noisy environments. While commercialization is still distant, the potential for sound-based AI systems to revolutionize early disease detection is enormous, raising a critical question:

Will this democratization of healthcare technology be the breakthrough needed for global health, or just another tech promise?

Read the full article on Bloomberg.

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