A diagnostic tool for respiratory disease: machine learning coughs up

It’s likely that coughing ranks up there with your least favourite sounds. A fellow train passenger’s persistent hacking can feel impossible to tune out, for instance. And it’s even worse for the cougher themselves, who has to contend with feeling rotten while worrying about how the noise is affecting those around them. But as Udantha Abeyratne points out, we shouldn’t be humiliated by a noisy cough not least as we can’t help it because it can give doctors important clues about respiratory disease.Cough is the body’s natural reflex mechanism to clear the respiratory system of foreign materials and various internal secretions and obstructions, explains the associate professor at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland and creator of the technology behind smartphone app ResApp which analyses the sound of a cough to determine which disease is causing it.