Smartphones could soon help identify a range of health conditions

BOSTON - One day you may be able to speak into your smartphone and have it determine whether you're sick or not.

Our voices tend to change when we go through puberty and we're older. But the National Institutes of Health has launched a project to examine how certain voice patterns could signal a range of health conditions.

To speak you use your lungs, voice box, mouth, and brain, so illness affecting any of these can change how your voice sounds. Scientists plan to gather 20,000 to 30,000 voice samples from study participants, along with their health data, and then using artificial intelligence, create an app for a wearable device like a smartphone or watch, that will be able to analyze a person's voice and alert them to see a doctor.

They say this strategy could be used to pick up on a host of health conditions such as pneumonia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and even depression.