Italy's Neosperience finds way to detect COVID-19 from sound

Neosperience SpA

23/03/2021 13:19

MILAN, March 23 (Reuters) - Italy's Neosperience  NSP.MI 
has developed a way to detect COVID-19 infections by analysing a
person's speech or cough, the software company said, sending its
shares up more than 13% on Tuesday. 
    Neosperience President Dario Melpignano said the system,
which detects sounds characteristic of the respiratory disease,
was more than 80% accurate.
    The project was developed with partners and by using
artificial intelligence embedded in a cloud platform called
Neosperience Health Cloud, which has already been used to
analyse chest x-rays, the company said in a statement.
    Neosperience's shares, listed on the Aim section of the
Milan Bourse  .FTITAIM , were automatically suspended after
rising 13.5% to 6.50 euros per share. 
    "It's just the beginning of a project that has incredible
potential because the processing of this sort of data can be
effectively used as a screening test," said Alessandro Nizardo
Chailly, the chief executive of Neosperience's partner Capsula. 
    The recording and analysis model could help to detect and
diagnose a wide range of pathogens, added Capsula's scientific
adviser Giuseppe Andreoni.

 (Reporting by Giancarlo Navach. Editing by Giulia Segreti and
Mark Potter)
 ((giancarlo.navach@thomsonreuters.com; +39 0266129518))