Acoustic Cough Monitoring for the Management of Patients With Known Respiratory Disease

NCT ID: NCT05042063

Last Updated: 2025-11-20

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

COMPLETED

Total Enrollment

616 participants

Study Classification

OBSERVATIONAL

Study Start Date

2021-09-15

Study Completion Date

2022-09-15

Brief Summary

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This study pretends to evaluate the potential use of Hyfe Cough Tracker (Hyfe) to screen for, diagnose, and support the clinical management of patients with respiratory diseases, while enriching a dataset of disease-specific annotated coughs, for further refinement of similar systems.

Detailed Description

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This is an observational study that will take place in the two campuses of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, located in Pamplona and Madrid (Spain).

An Artificial-Intelligence system (AI) that detects and records explosive putative cough sounds and identifies human cough based on acoustic characteristics will be used to automatically monitor cough. Potential participants either attending the outpatient clinic or hospitalised with a complaint of cough will be invited by their treating physician, or a member of the research team, and included in the study by part of the research team. A researcher will instruct participants on how to install and use Hyfe Cough Tracker in their smartphones. Participants will be monitored for 30 days (outpatients) or until discharged from the hospital (inpatients). Participants will be asked to complete a daily, online, standardised 100 mm visual analogue scale (VAS) to register changes in the subjective intensity of their cough, while using Hyfe to objectively monitor changes in its frequency.

In parallel, a dataset of annotated cough sounds will be constructed and retrospectively used to assess differences in acoustic patterns of cough, and to evaluate the performance of the system detecting them.

A first subgroup of participants will be recruited outside the clinical setting and asked to provide a series of elicited sounds, including coughs, which will then be used to determine the system's performance accurately discriminating coughs from non-cough sounds, and compared to trained human listeners.

A second subgroup of participants will be will be instructed to use Hyfe, and the related Hyfe Air wearable device continuously for a period between 6 and 24 hours, while they record themselves using a MP3 recorder connected to a lapel microphone. This group will be used to evaluate the performance of Hyfe and Hyfe Air in a real-life setting, with spontaneous coughs.

Conditions

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Cough COPD GERD Asthma Tuberculosis Non-Tuberculous Mycobacterial Pneumonia COVID-19 Pneumonia

Study Design

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Observational Model Type

COHORT

Study Time Perspective

PROSPECTIVE

Study Groups

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Participants with cough as a symptom

This group will be composed of patients at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra that complain of having cough as a remarkable symptom.

Hyfe Cough Tracker

Intervention Type DEVICE

Hyfe Cough Tracker is a digital acoustic surveillance system that uses an artificial intelligence system to discriminate cough from non-cough sounds. Hyfe is an AI-enabled mobile app that records short snippets (\<0.5 seconds) of putative cough explosive sounds and then classifies them as cough or non-cough using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Briefly, the acoustic characteristics of recorded sounds are converted into an image file, which is then processed by an algorithm trained to identify graphical differences in images. This creates an adjustable prediction score, with values above it, resulting in a sound being classified as "cough", and those below being classified as "non-cough.

Validation subgroup 1

This subgroup will be composed by both, patients belonging to the main study group, as well as voluntaries, who will be asked to provide a series of elicited cough and non-cough sounds for validation purposes.

Hyfe Cough Tracker

Intervention Type DEVICE

Hyfe Cough Tracker is a digital acoustic surveillance system that uses an artificial intelligence system to discriminate cough from non-cough sounds. Hyfe is an AI-enabled mobile app that records short snippets (\<0.5 seconds) of putative cough explosive sounds and then classifies them as cough or non-cough using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Briefly, the acoustic characteristics of recorded sounds are converted into an image file, which is then processed by an algorithm trained to identify graphical differences in images. This creates an adjustable prediction score, with values above it, resulting in a sound being classified as "cough", and those below being classified as "non-cough.

Validation subgroup 2

This subgroup will be composed by inpatients admitted to the Clínica Universidad de Navarra with a diagnosis of respiratory disease, or presenting cough as a symptom, as well as healthy individuals. This group will be monitored with Hyfe Cough Tracker and Hyfe Air for a variable period of 6-24 hours, while they are recorded with a MP3 recorder connected to a lapel microphone.

Hyfe Cough Tracker

Intervention Type DEVICE

Hyfe Cough Tracker is a digital acoustic surveillance system that uses an artificial intelligence system to discriminate cough from non-cough sounds. Hyfe is an AI-enabled mobile app that records short snippets (\<0.5 seconds) of putative cough explosive sounds and then classifies them as cough or non-cough using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Briefly, the acoustic characteristics of recorded sounds are converted into an image file, which is then processed by an algorithm trained to identify graphical differences in images. This creates an adjustable prediction score, with values above it, resulting in a sound being classified as "cough", and those below being classified as "non-cough.

Hyfe Air

Intervention Type DEVICE

Hyfe Air is a wearable device with an incorporated wireless lapel microphone. The device´s recordings can be run through the same cough-detection algorithm used by Hyfe Cough Tracker, while its results are directly stored in a remote database and are not displayed to participants.

Interventions

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Hyfe Cough Tracker

Hyfe Cough Tracker is a digital acoustic surveillance system that uses an artificial intelligence system to discriminate cough from non-cough sounds. Hyfe is an AI-enabled mobile app that records short snippets (\<0.5 seconds) of putative cough explosive sounds and then classifies them as cough or non-cough using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. Briefly, the acoustic characteristics of recorded sounds are converted into an image file, which is then processed by an algorithm trained to identify graphical differences in images. This creates an adjustable prediction score, with values above it, resulting in a sound being classified as "cough", and those below being classified as "non-cough.

Intervention Type DEVICE

Hyfe Air

Hyfe Air is a wearable device with an incorporated wireless lapel microphone. The device´s recordings can be run through the same cough-detection algorithm used by Hyfe Cough Tracker, while its results are directly stored in a remote database and are not displayed to participants.

Intervention Type DEVICE

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

For participants in the main study group

* Outpatient or inpatients at the Clinical Universidad de Navarra with a complaint of cough.
* The patient or his/her legal representative, have given consent to participate in the study.

For participants in the sub-study groups:

* Being 18 years or older.
* Providing consent for the sub-study

Exclusion Criteria

* Inability to accept the privacy policy and terms of use of Hyfe.
* Lack of access to a Wi-Fi network at the site of residence (for the main study group).
* Unwillingness to regularly use the cough-surveillance system throughout the monitoring period
Minimum Eligible Age

5 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

100 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sponsors

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Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal

OTHER

Sponsor Role collaborator

Hyfe Inc

OTHER

Sponsor Role collaborator

Clinica Universidad de Navarra, Universidad de Navarra

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Responsibility Role SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

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Carlos Chaccour, MD, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Clinica Universidad de Navarra

Locations

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Clinica Universidad de Navarra

Pamplona, Navarre, Spain

Site Status

Countries

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Spain

References

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Barton A, Gaydecki P, Holt K, Smith JA. Data reduction for cough studies using distribution of audio frequency content. Cough. 2012 Dec 12;8(1):12. doi: 10.1186/1745-9974-8-12.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 23231789 (View on PubMed)

Boulet LP, Coeytaux RR, McCrory DC, French CT, Chang AB, Birring SS, Smith J, Diekemper RL, Rubin B, Irwin RS; CHEST Expert Cough Panel. Tools for assessing outcomes in studies of chronic cough: CHEST guideline and expert panel report. Chest. 2015 Mar;147(3):804-814. doi: 10.1378/chest.14-2506.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 25522203 (View on PubMed)

Bujang MA, Adnan TH. Requirements for Minimum Sample Size for Sensitivity and Specificity Analysis. J Clin Diagn Res. 2016 Oct;10(10):YE01-YE06. doi: 10.7860/JCDR/2016/18129.8744. Epub 2016 Oct 1.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 27891446 (View on PubMed)

Decalmer SC, Webster D, Kelsall AA, McGuinness K, Woodcock AA, Smith JA. Chronic cough: how do cough reflex sensitivity and subjective assessments correlate with objective cough counts during ambulatory monitoring? Thorax. 2007 Apr;62(4):329-34. doi: 10.1136/thx.2006.067413. Epub 2006 Nov 13.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 17101736 (View on PubMed)

Gabaldon-Figueira JC, Brew J, Dore DH, Umashankar N, Chaccour J, Orrillo V, Tsang LY, Blavia I, Fernandez-Montero A, Bartolome J, Grandjean Lapierre S, Chaccour C. Digital acoustic surveillance for early detection of respiratory disease outbreaks in Spain: a protocol for an observational study. BMJ Open. 2021 Jul 2;11(7):e051278. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051278.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 34215614 (View on PubMed)

Hall JI, Lozano M, Estrada-Petrocelli L, Birring S, Turner R. The present and future of cough counting tools. J Thorac Dis. 2020 Sep;12(9):5207-5223. doi: 10.21037/jtd-2020-icc-003.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 33145097 (View on PubMed)

Matos S, Birring SS, Pavord ID, Evans DH. An automated system for 24-h monitoring of cough frequency: the leicester cough monitor. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2007 Aug;54(8):1472-9. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2007.900811.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 17694868 (View on PubMed)

Park SC, Kang MJ, Han CH, Lee SM, Kim CJ, Lee JM, Kang YA. Prevalence, incidence, and mortality of nontuberculous mycobacterial infection in Korea: a nationwide population-based study. BMC Pulm Med. 2019 Aug 1;19(1):140. doi: 10.1186/s12890-019-0901-z.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 31370826 (View on PubMed)

Porter P, Abeyratne U, Swarnkar V, Tan J, Ng TW, Brisbane JM, Speldewinde D, Choveaux J, Sharan R, Kosasih K, Della P. A prospective multicentre study testing the diagnostic accuracy of an automated cough sound centred analytic system for the identification of common respiratory disorders in children. Respir Res. 2019 Jun 6;20(1):81. doi: 10.1186/s12931-019-1046-6.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 31167662 (View on PubMed)

Ragonnet R, Trauer JM, Geard N, Scott N, McBryde ES. Profiling Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission and the resulting disease burden in the five highest tuberculosis burden countries. BMC Med. 2019 Nov 22;17(1):208. doi: 10.1186/s12916-019-1452-0.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 31752895 (View on PubMed)

Sharan RV, Abeyratne UR, Swarnkar VR, Claxton S, Hukins C, Porter P. Predicting spirometry readings using cough sound features and regression. Physiol Meas. 2018 Sep 5;39(9):095001. doi: 10.1088/1361-6579/aad948.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 30091716 (View on PubMed)

Song WJ, Chang YS, Faruqi S, Kang MK, Kim JY, Kang MG, Kim S, Jo EJ, Lee SE, Kim MH, Plevkova J, Park HW, Cho SH, Morice AH. Defining Chronic Cough: A Systematic Review of the Epidemiological Literature. Allergy Asthma Immunol Res. 2016 Mar;8(2):146-55. doi: 10.4168/aair.2016.8.2.146. Epub 2015 Sep 18.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 26739408 (View on PubMed)

Turner RD. Cough in pulmonary tuberculosis: Existing knowledge and general insights. Pulm Pharmacol Ther. 2019 Apr;55:89-94. doi: 10.1016/j.pupt.2019.01.008. Epub 2019 Feb 1.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
PMID: 30716411 (View on PubMed)

Sanchez-Olivieri I, Rudd M, Gabaldon-Figueira JC, Carmona-Torre F, Del Pozo JL, Moorsmith R, Jover L, Galvosas M, Small P, Grandjean Lapierre S, Chaccour C. Performance evaluation of human cough annotators: optimal metrics and sex differences. BMJ Open Respir Res. 2023 Nov;10(1):e001942. doi: 10.1136/bmjresp-2023-001942.

Reference Type DERIVED
PMID: 37945314 (View on PubMed)

Provided Documents

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Document Type: Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan

View Document

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

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PI_2021/72

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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