A Pakistani Startup DetectNow is Using AI to Detect Coronavirus

DetectNow is a local Pakistani startup that is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect Coronavirus in people. The startup that is also registered with the National Incubation Center(NIC), employs AI to detect the presence of COVID-19  by examining cough audios.

The startup wished to provide cost-free screening without delays for coronavirus. Cough is one of the principal symptoms of COVID-19 and on the basis of the idea of cough analysis through AI, DetectNow intends to look for the uncommon biosignals of the Covid-19 cough and assess the probability of contracting to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A Pakistani Startup DetectNow is Using AI to Detect Coronavirus

The service is available via a web app, making it accessible and convenient even in low-resource regions, however, the diagnostics function is not live till now, as this will need a medical trial first.

The app has so far collected 600 samples. DetectNow aims to act as an extra tool in fighting Covid-19 by helping national health care systems in the screening, outbreak prevention, and outbreak control process.

In a statement, the team behind this startup said,

We are awaiting verified data from COVID-19 positive tested people. This has to be done in a clinical trial to protect Data privacy. Considering that we want to CLEAN a drum recording (highly explosive sounds), we removed low frequencies below 40 Hz and high frequencies above 15 kHz – 18 kHz because of microphone limitations. We also used a gate to remove unwanted noise between the coughs and make sure that you do not remove the “silent coughs” or “heavy breathing” because this might probably be important features for the model. Finally normalizing the sound, so that we do not have different loudness/ amplitudes among the files.

DetectNow is a non-profit group that works for the social good and humanitarian development. They hope their strategy of cough analysis will provide an underlying basis towards further clinical research with AI on pulmonary diseases.

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