Contributes to mistaken diagnoses and less effective treatment; research gives insight into what science has gotten wrong about understanding cough

NEW YORK, NY, USA, September 6, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Coughing is one of the most common reasons people seek medical attention. Yet due to simply not enough good data, medical professionals and researchers have been unable to accurately measure and quantify a patient’s cough to properly diagnose and treat the problem or determine if a new medication is effective. “The Statistics of Counting Coughs,” a new paper from Hyfe, Inc., the global leader in AI-powered cough detection, tracking and classification, shows that short-term or intermittent tracking of cough frequency is often misleading and does not provide accurate data on a patient’s condition.

The full report will be published in the Oct. edition of Lung magazine and is available online now at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00408-022-00559-6.

While other biomarkers such as blood pressure, temperature and heart rate are measured with great accuracy and specificity, cough frequency is generally estimated, often incorrectly, by the patient. Questions such as how many times did you cough yesterday, when did you cough the most, how long did you go without coughing, what triggers your cough and did your cough pattern change often go either unanswered or are inaccurately estimated.

The study shows that novel technology and statistical approaches are now bringing rigor to detecting change in cough patterns that were previously purely subjective, insensitive or often wrong. The research shows that monitoring a person’s cough during four-hour periods for three days is insufficient to determine whether a person's cough IS getting better, worse or staying the same. Prior research has shown that even extending that to a single 24-hour period is problematic.

The report was written by Matthew Rudd, Ph.D., chair of the department of mathematics and computer science at The University of the South; Woo-Jung Song, from the department of allergy and clinical immunology at Asan Medical Center; and Peter Small, M.D., chief medical officer of Hyfe.

“The status quo for monitoring and treating cough is broken,” said Dr. Small. “Unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of cough can improve the lives of patients, the quality of services of health care providers and the rapidity of developing new drugs by researchers.” He added that “the ability to unobtrusively monitor cough answers the question of whether an individual's cough is getting better or worse. The statistical insights of this paper make it possible to define a statistical distribution of what is normal for that individual and quickly recognize change.”

The study illustrates that continuous, unobtrusive cough monitoring over extended periods of time is the clear solution to detecting changes in cough rates. With technological advances that are in the pipeline, chronic coughers will be able to share this data with their health care providers to better manage their chronic cough. The ability of doctors to properly diagnose, treat and monitor patients will improve as they are able to get real-time data. And researchers working on new treatments will have the data and tools needed to rigorously assess the efficacy of medications.

Hyfe’s AI-powered technology passively and remotely monitors the number of times a person coughs and the sound of the cough through any smart device, such as a mobile phone or smartwatch. This data collected over time provides users information that enables them to modify their lifestyle to improve their health. For example, a patient may start exercising indoors after learning cold air exacerbates their cough.

Hyfe, Inc. is the global leader in AI-powered cough detection and classification that provides insight into cough patterns and correlations that can greatly improve treatment and prevention. With more than 320 million cough-like sounds, Hyfe maintains the largest cough dataset in the world enabling the building of powerful models to track, manage and diagnose respiratory illnesses. Hyfe provides a research platform that is used by pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, government agencies, health care providers and patients and has partnerships with leading academic institutions including Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at San Francisco. The company was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. More information is available at Hyfe.ai, on social media @hyfeapp and LinkedIn at /hyfe.

Note to media: Digital assets for this story are available at hyfe.PressRep.net.

Steve Honig
The Honig Company, LLC
+1 818-986-4300
email us here

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.