Can Alexa Help Doctors Detect the Onset of Dementia?

The National Institute on Aging has awarded a four-year grant of $1.17 million to Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the University of Massachusetts Boston to use voice assistant systems to identify early cognitive impairment, reports Fosters . The goal is to enhance early detection using voice and language to spot individuals in a nascent stage of cognitive impairment before they present to clinicians. Dartmouth Professor John A. Batsis said the initiative is a collaboration between the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health, and an effort to connect members of the scientific and medical communities on research projects. "Our team envisions that the changes in the speech patterns of individuals using the voice assistant systems may be sensitive to their decline in memory and function over time," said University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Xiaohui Liang. The researchers will develop the system, apply machine and deep learning methods, and compile data on participants to provide feedback to them, as well as to caregivers and doctors. If successful, the results will enable the investigators to broadly test the system, complementing current diagnostic procedures that could help individuals maintain independence at home. Batsis said the project will create a low-cost and practical home-based assessment method using voice assistant systems for early detection of cognitive decline.