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Collection of Pulmonary Health Symptoms

Upload short recordings of cough and breathing, and report symptoms to help researchers to detect respiratory symptoms. The goal is to design automatic detection of respiratory symptoms, which is useful in diagnosis of e.g. COVID-19. Healthy and non-healthy participants are welcome.

Volunteer your Breathing and Contribute to Science

The iBreath app collects sound samples while you read a text, and a few seconds of breathing and coughing. We need many participants in order to build predictive models and contribute to the early diagnosis of pulmonary diseases including any linkage to COVID-19.

The purpose of this research is to collect data to inform the diagnosis of pulmonary diseases including any linkage to COVID-19. This is done by developing machine learning algorithms, based primarily on sounds of the participants' voice, breathing, and coughing.

In order to enable this research we are launching a large scale, crowdsourced data collection from healthy and non-healthy participants through the iBreath app. The app collects basic demographics and medical history data, as well as voice samples while you read text on the screen and a few seconds of breathing and coughing. The app will also ask if you have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, since this is correlated with respiratory symptoms.

Data collection is completely anonymous. No person-identifiable data is collected. The app collects one location sample (to know which country our are in), but does not track you and only collects data when you actively interacting with it. The data will be stored on secure servers and be used solely for research purposes. We plan to share the dataset with other researchers after the initial analysis and pre-processing. The app will not give medical advice or provide reports on symptoms, and it does not provide any medical assistance.

What should I do?

On a daily basis, you should fill in the short survey on symptoms and record three small sound samples. That's all.

Partners

This study is done by the Copenhagen Center for Health Technology (CACHET) at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). This is part of the Danish initiative "Corona Monitor". And we are collaborating with the COVID-19 Sounds project at the University of Cambridge. 

Who will have access to your information?

All collected data is 100 % anonymised at source (i.e., on the phone). iBreath do not collect any of person-identifiable information. All data gathered during the study is stored in secure cloud servers. Please also check our Privacy Policy.

Data will be shared with collaborating technical and medical researchers working on pulmonary diseases, including the researchers and medical doctors fighting the COVID-19 virus. Results from this study will be published in an anonymised format in scientific journals and other scientific places, and may be presented at scientific conferences. We strive for open-access publication, which means that access to the research results is available for all for free.

You can read the informed consent form in the app before starting the study, and you are must agree to the terms in order to use it. You can alway stop using iBreath and remove the app from your phone.

Download

iBreath is currently only available for Android and can be downloaded from Google Play here.

An iPhone version will be released soon.

Contact Information

For practical and technical questions, you can reach Devender Kumar at deku@dtu.dk

 

Contact

Jakob Eyvind Bardram
Head of Sections, Professor
DTU Health Tech
+45 45 25 53 11
https://www.cachet.dk/research/studies/ibreath
4 DECEMBER 2024