Game changing app, not yet released, is 92% accurate in determining if you have COVID

Imagine being able to find out if you have COVID simply by opening a smartphone app and coughing. According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, the app, with a 92% accuracy rate, is called ResApp and it uses machine learning to analyze your coughs to help determine whether you are infected or not. 741 patients in the U.S. and India tested the app which included 446 infected with the coronavirus.

Those testing the app filled out paperwork detailing their symptoms and then coughed into a smartphone with the app installed. The app correctly detected COVID in 92% of the people testing the app who were already known to be infected.

To test whether the app could differentiate a cough from COVID compared to a cough from other respiratory issues such as asthma, pneumonia, and respiratory tract infections, 1,007 patients with non-COVID breathing issues were tested by the app, and 90% of the time, the correct diagnosis of COVID was made by the app.

These results are quite promising considering that lateral flow tests can detect around 72 percent of cases where the patient has symptoms and 58 percent of asymptomatic cases. With its accuracy and portability, the developers say that the app will be used in situations where frequent testing is a necessity such as in sports, entertainment, healthcare, and travel.

The ResApp has caught the attention of Pfizer, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical firms and one of the companies that developed a COVID vaccine. Last week, Pfizer offered to buy ResApp for $0.115 a share or $74.3 million in cash. ResApp also entered into a licensing deal with Pfizer that pays it $3 million upfront with another $1 million possible through milestone payments.

Professor Catherine Bennett, a member of ResApp's Covid-19 Scientific Advisory Board, said that "By rapidly ruling out Covid-19, ResApp's COVID-19 test would significantly reduce the number of rapid antigen and PCR tests required, while still maintaining the disease surveillance needed to manage the continued impact of Covid-19." She adds, "The simplicity, ease of use and unlimited scalability of ResApp's test will be welcomed by public health officials around the world."

The CEO and Managing Director of ResApp, Tony Keating, says, "'We are very excited about these preliminary results for detecting Covid-19 using cough audio recorded on a smartphone." The app listens for key signatures in a cough and uses an algorithm to make the process highly accurate.

And now that COVID testing is no longer free in the U.K., Keating says, "We intend to accelerate commercialization by immediately engaging with regulators globally and we have already commenced discussions with global health and technology companies with the goal of rapidly bringing this product to market." As for Pfizer's involvement with his company, Keating states, "To have someone like Pfizer, which is very thorough in what it does, for them to propose to acquire ResApp just goes to show the confidence in our company and our team," he said.

Even though there are many people who might wonder whether this type of product is coming too late, Keating, the firm's top executive, said," The WHO have recently warned that the pandemic is not over, that health systems globally continue to strain under the current caseload and that we should be prepared for the potential of more dangerous variants to emerge."

Having a smartphone app able to accurately test for COVID eliminates the issues that are found in current testing such as the distribution of the tests, the cost of producing and stocking the tests in stores, doctors' offices, and hospitals, and the impact on the environment of rapid antigen and PCR testing. Then there is the accuracy of current tests to consider. Are users following the instructions to the "T"?

These days most people know how to install and open an app. And an even higher percentage of people know how to cough. But following the directions for an at-home COVID test is another story.

One of the most popular at-home tests comes from Abbot's BinaxNow. This test correctly returned a positive result to COVID infected testers 84.6% of the time and correctly showed a negative reading 98.5% of the time. Overall, the ease and accuracy of the ResApp would make testing for COVID as easy as coughing near your phone.

Keep in mind that ResApp is not yet available.