Digital App for Speech & Health Monitoring

NCT ID: NCT06450418

Last Updated: 2025-09-18

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: RECRUITING
• Total Enrollment: 150 participants
• Study Classification: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-07-12
• Study Completion Date: 2026-06-30

Brief Summary

Many people living with neurodegenerative conditions like dementia, motor neuron disease (MND), multiple sclerosis (MS), and Parkinson's disease (PD), suffer from speech problems. Using common digital technologies such as smartphone apps, the investigators can record and analyse speech in detail to provide new information for people living with these conditions, researchers, and healthcare professionals. This study will investigate the use of these digital speech recordings to help diagnose and monitor these conditions.

To take part, participants will have either a diagnosis of dementia, motor neuron disease, Parkinson's disease or Multiple Sclerosis, OR they will have no diagnosis of a neurological condition. Researchers will compare people with a diagnosis of a Neurological condition to those without.

Detailed Description

This project aims to create novel speech-based solutions for: 1) Early detection, 2) Monitoring and 3) Stratification of neurodegenerative disorders including dementia, motor neuron disease (MND), Parkinson's disease (PD), and multiple sclerosis(MS). The investigators will develop and validate proof of concept and early-stage algorithms derived from acoustic data, which will be scaled and tested in deeply-phenotyped population.

2.2 Objectives Primary Objectives

1. To deploy and iterate a digital platform, co-produced with people living with neurodegenerative disorders, for acquisition of speech data from well characterised cohorts of people living with neurodegenerative disorders (dementia, motor neuron disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease), and a healthy control cohort (comprising relatives/carers and volunteers without a neurological diagnosis), linked to our highly curated clinical registries at the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.

2. To collect a large body of acoustic speech data from well characterised cohorts of people living with neurodegenerative disorders (dementia, MND/ALS, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease), and a healthy control cohort (comprising relatives/carers and volunteers without a neurological diagnosis), linked to highly curated clinical registries.

3. To apply machine learning approaches directly to acoustic and linguistic signals from voices from people with dementia, MND, MS, Parkinson's, and healthy controls (comprising relatives/carers and volunteers without a neurological diagnosis), and to characterise prosodic patterns (rhythm, intonation, and fluency) without explicit reference to the text which is spoken, providing powerful cues about the health of the speaker.

4. Compare speech based digital outcome measures to current clinical standards to characterise and validate their clinimetric properties.

Secondary Objectives

1. Assess the feasibility and acceptability of a digital outcome measure platform in people living with neurodegenerative conditions, for use in clinical care and research.

2. To create a repository of well characterised acoustic voice samples for open access sharing/collaboration with research and industry partners.

Conditions

Dementia; Motor Neuron Disease; Multiple Sclerosis; Parkinson Disease

Study Design

• Observational Model Type: COHORT
• Study Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE

Study Groups

Carers/Realtives/ Healthy - No Diagnosis of a Neurodegenerative Disorder

No interventions assigned to this group

Motor Neuron Disease

No interventions assigned to this group

Multiple Sclerosis

No interventions assigned to this group

Dementia

No interventions assigned to this group

Parkinson's Disease

No interventions assigned to this group

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• A person with a diagnosis of Motor Neuron Disease, Dementia, Multiple Sclerosis, or Parkinson's Disease.
• A relative or carer of the above who does not report to have a neurological condition.
• A healthy volunteer who does not report to have a neurological condition.

Exclusion Criteria

• Age <16 years
• Significant and uncorrected visual or hearing impairment (precluding use of the App).
• Lack capacity to consent to project due to cognitive impairment (precluding understanding of the study and use of the App).

• Minimum Eligible Age: 16 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

NHS Lothian

OTHER_GOV

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Edinburgh

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Suvankar Pal, Prof

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Edinburgh

Locations

NHS Lothian

Edinburgh, , United Kingdom

Site Status: RECRUITING

Countries

United Kingdom

Central Contacts

Christine R Weaver, MSc

Role: CONTACT

cweaver@ed.ac.uk

01314659512

Facility Contacts

Suvankar Pal

Role: primary

Other Identifiers

AC24003

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id