Brief intro: NeuroHarb novelty is based on AI-powered technology to trace and capture various speech modifications to reduce the ambiguity of traditional language tests and support diagnostic efforts of cognitive impairment and disorders by clinicians.
Why it matters:
Cognitive decline in older age, leading to dementia, is a growing problem in industrialized and industrializing societies
- 2015 : 47 million people
- 2050 : app.141 million people
Cognitive decline is exhausting economically and socially:
- 2015 : global cost --$818 billion
- App 85% of costs are related to family and social, rather than medical care
Harmful effects are not only associated with advanced forms of cognitive decline as mild cognitive impairment can significantly affect the quality of life of both patients and their caretakers. Overall, around 10-20% of the elderly have mild cognitive impairment. Dementia is developing years before the first symptoms become obvious (up to 15-20 years). Due to the alarming growth of the number of people with dementia worldwide, early detection of cognitive decline and impairment is one of the key issues. Progressive techniques like neuroimaging or genetic measurement show good results, but can’t be widely spread due to invasiveness and high cost.
Cognitive disorders tend to emerge sporadically difficult to detect throughout infrequent checks. Besides the challenges, self-reported questionnaires or data sets collected in lab settings impose, an additional challenge is an access to data that truly reflects the mental state of a patient. The range of variations in scores might overlap with those participants, who do not experience any decline in cognitive functions making them not highly reliable in capturing individual differences. Recent studies have suggested that various speech modifications can be one of the earliest signs of cognitive impairment before other signs become obvious. Traditional language tests are not highly reliable in this context since they tend to provide quite ambiguous results AI-powered techniques
- can recognize various language modifications
- can capture early signs of cognitive decline
- can help to glean an understanding of the true mental state of a patient
- can detect symptoms that might potentially be harbingers of various cognitive impairments