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Georgia Startup Races to Complete AI-powered Voice Screening Tool to Crush COVID-19

Share your Voice to Crush COVID! BRAVE Innovations rallies the community, faith groups, healthcare workers, colleges, and civic organizations to spur participation in urgent voiceprint research.


Atlanta, GA - With its innovative AI methods and algorithms, Atlanta-based BRAVE Innovations is working tirelessly to increase the number of confidential voice samples recorded at COVIDvoice.net to launch a voice-based COVID-19 screening tool ASAP.


In the spirit of #InThisTogether, BRAVE Innovations strives to gather thousands more voiceprint samples that will help refine their app that can immediately identify if a person is likely to have been infected with COVID-19. The ask is simple: visit the website, take 15 seconds to record the short scripted prompt, then repeat this process two more times.


To slow the community spread and ultimately crush the pandemic, citizens need easy access to quick and effective screening methods. By listening for specific vocal changes, BRAVE Innovation’s COVIDvoice will be able to detect if a voice donor has COVID-19. This will act as an early warning system for donors who provide contact information, and will help us get our schools, teams, and communities back together, safely.


This is both a numbers game and a race against time to analyze thousands of voice prints from people who have tested positive, negative or recovered from COVID-19,” explains BRAVE Innovations CEO and Chief Research Officer Bruce Walker, Ph.D. “To quickly move from our current prototype to a final COVID-19 screening tool, we need to galvanize thousands of citizens to donate voice samples. We need numbers comparable to a stadium packed for a Georgia Tech football game.”


The COVIDvoice Project is a public-private partnership, bringing together the brightest minds from the fields of AI, voice research, medicine, psychology, and technology. Technology development is being led by BRAVE Innovations (www.BRAVEinnovations.ai) with technical support from the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory (www.ABiL.ihrc.com), a collaboration between ASRT, Inc., IHRC, Inc., and Georgia Tech’s Bioinformatics Graduate Program.


When finalized, the BRAVE Innovations voice-based COVID screening tool will be available at no cost to schools, colleges, universities, daycares, community organizations, clubs, associations, amateur sports organizations, churches and houses of worship anywhere in the world.


Because COVID-19 distresses numerous systems in the body, including the lungs, vocal cords, and neural signals from the brain, it affects speech. Detecting subtle voice changes can aid in the identification of those who may have unknowingly contracted the virus. This is particularly important because, according to the CDC, asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people who are contagious are estimated to account for more than 50 percent of transmissions.


BRAVE Innovations’ Founder and CEO is Bruce Walker, Ph.D., a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology with joint appointments in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing. Dr. Walker is also a member of the GVU Center, and Associate Director of the GT Masters Program in HCI (MS-HCI). He completed his Ph.D. at Rice University in Psychology (Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction).


All voice samples, with any other information provided, are stored securely and safely, and used only for research purposes. All volunteers who sign up to contribute voice samples can learn about their voiceprint and have it monitored for changes.


For information about the groundbreaking AI technology at the heart of this project, you can also reach out to: research@BRAVEinnovations.ai or info@covidvoice.net


About ABiL

Established in 2014, ABiL is a private-public collaboration between IHRC, Inc., ASRT, Inc., and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Built to provide unmatched bioinformatics support and training, ABiL consists of a dedicated team of full-time bioinformatics scientists with several decades of individual research experience. As a leader in the development of cutting-edge bioinformatics solutions, ABiL provides quality R&D output, computational tool and software development, and capacity building.


For more information, visit https://www.abil.ihrc.com/

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