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