Development of Early Vocal Screening Service Model of Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative disease. If PD can be diagnosed and treated as early as possible, not only can it effectively delay the degeneration of the brain, but also further maintain the follow-up quality of patients’ life. This study focuses on developing an early vocal screening service of PD to detecting the stage of PD and helps healthy people to do an early screening of the possibility of developing PD. There are four patients with PD and three neurology physicians that were interviewed. In addition, a questionnaire survey of the healthy people on the acceptance of early screening services. For patients, they have to spend a long time to confirm the diagnosis during the observation period of suspected PD. The existing diagnosis is very dependent on the physician’s expertise and clinical experience, especially the initial diagnosis. Thus, it delays the golden period of delaying correction, and early administration and treatment. Healthy people with the condition of PD likely possess little knowledge about it. But, they were willing to try the service of early screening to see whether they are suffering from suspected PD symptoms in a few minutes. According to the results, an early vocal screening service model is developed. The possibility of contracting PD can be detected as early as possible by subtle changes in speech as shown in the voice recording of 3 to 5 minutes left by healthy people, such as trembling, breathing pause, and other factors that are not easily identified by voice detection analysis.