A test for Parkinsons with a phone call Max Little

so well I do applied mass and this is a

peculiar problem for anyone who does

applied math is that we are like

management consultants no one knows what

the hell we do so I’m going to give you

some attempt today to try and explain to

you what I do

so dancing is one of the most human of

activities we delight at ballet

virtuosos and tap dancers you’ll see

later on it now ballet requires an

extraordinary level of expertise and a

high level of skill and probably a level

of initial suitability that may well

have a genetic component to it now sadly

neurological disorders such as

Parkinson’s disease gradually destroy

this extraordinary ability as of his

doing to my friend yam stripling who was

a virtuoso ballet dancer in his time so

great progress and treatment has been

made over the years however there are

6.3 million people worldwide who have

the disease and they have to live with

incurable weakness tremor rigidity any

other symptoms that go along with the

disease so what we need our objective

tools to detect the disease before it’s

too late we need to be able to measure

progression objectively and ultimately

with only way we’re going to know when

we actually have a cure is when we have

an objective measure that can answer

that for sure but frustratingly with

Parkinson’s disease and other movement

disorders there are no biomarkers

there’s no simple blood tests that you

can do and the best that we have is like

this 20-minute neurologist test you have

to go to the clinic to do it it’s very

very costly and that means they’re

outside the clinical trials it’s just

never done it’s never done but what if

patients could do this test at home now

that would actually save on a difficult

trip to clinic and what if patients

could do that test themselves right no

expensive staff time required it takes

about three hundred dollars right away

in the neurologist clinic to do it so

what I want to propose to you as an

unconventional way in which we can try

to achieve this because you see in one

sense at least we are all virtuoso it’s

like my friend yam stripling so here we

have a video are the vibrating vocal

folds now this is healthy and this is

somebody making speech sounds and we can

think of ourselves as vocal ballet

dancers

because we have to coordinate all of

these vocal organs when we make sounds

and we all actually have the genes for

it Fox b2 for example and like ballet

it takes an extraordinary level of

training I mean just think how long it

takes a child to learn to speak and from

the sound we can actually track the

vocal fold position as it vibrates and

just as the limbs are affected in

Parkinson’s so too are the vocal organs

so in the bottom trace you can see

example of a regular vocal fold tremor

we see all the same symptoms we see

vocal tremor weakness and rigidity the

speech actually becomes quieter and more

breathy after a while and that’s one of

the example symptoms of it

so these vocal effects can actually be

quite subtle in some cases but with any

digital microphone and using precision

voice analysis software in combination

with the latest in machine learning

which is very advanced by now we can now

quantify exactly where somebody lies on

a continuum between health and disease

using voice signals alone so these voice

based tests how do they stack up against

expert clinical tests well they’re both

non-invasive the neurologists test is

non-invasive they’re both use existing

infrastructure don’t have to design a

whole new set of hospitals to do it and

they’re both accurate okay

but in addition voice based tests are

non expert that means they can be

self-administered they’re high speed

take about 30 seconds at the most

they’re ultra low-cost and we all know

that happens when something becomes

ultra low-cost it becomes massively

scalable and so here are some amazing

goals that I think we can deal with now

we can reduce logistical difficulties

for patients no need to go to the clinic

for a routine checkup we can do

high-frequency monitoring to get

objective data we can perform low-cost

mass recruitment for clinical trials and

we can make population scale screening

feasible for the first time we will have

the opportunity to start to search for

the early biomarkers of disease before

it’s too late

so taking the first steps towards this

today we’re launching the Parkinson’s

voice initiative with a key lab and

patients like me we’re aiming to record

a very large number of voices worldwide

to collect enough data to start to

tackle these four goals we have local

numbers accessible to three-quarters of

a billion people on the planet

anyone healthy oil Parkinson’s can call

in and cheaply and leave recordings a

few cents each and I’m really happy to

announce that we’ve already hit six

tenth of our target just in eight hours

thank you

connects by taking all these samples I

have let’s say 10,000 people yeah

will you you’ll be able to tell who’s

healthy and who’s not what way are you

gonna get out of those things so what

will happen is that during a call you

have to indicate whether or not you have

the disease on that right you see some

people may not do it they may not get

through it but we’ll get a very large

sample of data that is collected from

all different circumstances and it’s

getting it in different circumstances

that matter because then we are looking

at ironing out the confounding factors

and looking for the actual markers of

disease so you’re 86 percent accurate

right now

it’s much better than that actually my

student fantasy so I have to plug him

because he’s done some fantastic work

and now he has proved that it works of a

mobile telephone network as well which

enables this project and we’re getting

99% accuracy 99 well that’s an

improvement so so what that means is

people be able to people be able to call

in from their mobile phones and do this

test yeah and people with Parkinson’s

could call in record their voice and

then their doctor can check up on their

progress see where they’re doing in this

course the disease absolutely thanks so

much

max little everybody thanks

you