Background
Mental illness affects, for example, 27.8% of adults in Germany every year (RKI). The RKI's representative Mental Health Surveillance 2023 survey found that 20% of respondents had depressive symptoms, a figure that has almost doubled since 2019. The diagnosis and monitoring of the course of depression has so far been based in particular on the assessment of symptoms such as depression or loss of interest using standardised questionnaires. Objective parameters to support diagnosis and treatment do not yet exist.
In this context, so-called voice biomarkers are a promising approach. It has already been shown for numerous clinical pictures that the voice shows changes depending on the disease, which can be characteristically assigned to different diseases with the help of AI. Hundreds of scientific studies have already focussed on the possibility of diagnosing diseases using voice biomarkers and have so far shown good results. Mental health diseases in particular could benefit from the technology because it could potentially support earlier detection and targeted treatment. Almost 100 studies have shown that depression, for example, can be recognised algorithmically based on the voice.
However, the technology has yet to make the leap into practice. The existing AI algorithms have not yet been sufficiently trained with large volumes of complex and varied data from real-life situations. This is important in order to be able to achieve accurate results despite complex disease profiles.
Cooperation
This is why the MEDIAN Group and PeakProfiling, a start-up specialising in the diagnosis of diseases based on the voice, are entering into a partnership. PeakProfiling brings a unique technology to the table and the MEDIAN Group has many years of clinical expertise and excellent access to patients - in several countries. The collaboration will initially be rolled out at MEDIAN in Germany and Priory in the UK.
The long-term goal is to jointly develop products that can be used to objectively measure mental illness, thereby creating great added value for clinical diagnostics and care