Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst have come up with an AI microphone 'Flusense' that not only listens for coughing to estimate the percentage of people in public has flu-like illness. The device also has thermal camera to scan for people with elevated temperatures.
Researchers said Flusense is meant to capture trends at the population level and help forecast outbreaks.
According to its co-creator, Tauhidur Rahman, the device isn't meant to single out individual cases of illness but capture trends at the population level to see if something is developing that may not yet have been picked up in medical testing.
I thought if we could capture coughing or sneezing sounds from public spaces where a lot of people naturally congregate, we could utilize this information as a new source of data for predicting epidemiologic trends,' he told UMass Amherst's news blog.
