UDSv4 and Digital Voice#

About Digital Voice#

ADRC Resources#

Supporting Digital Voice Data Collection - A Collaboration with the Clinical Task Force Technology Workgroup#

Events and Training#

FAQs#

• What are the benefits of digital biomarkers to my ADRC?

  There are many practical benefits to adding voice recording to your ADRC, they include:

  • Acting as a QC tool to determine natural drift in standardization in any longitudinal study
  • Providing an easy, low-cost collection of data that can be done in a participant’s preferred language
  • Allowing additional scientific enablement at no additional participant burden
  • Increasing opportunities to explore acoustic and semantic features in novel forms
• What are the benefits of digital biomarkers to participants?

  While direct participant benefit may be low at the outset, over time features of voice data may be able to:

  • Provide early indicators of cognitive impairment in preclinical or prodromal Alzheimer’s dementia
  • Help track disease progression and predict conversion to dementia
• What are the benefits of digital biomarkers to science?

  Features of voice data are already showing promise in:

  • Serving as a dementia screening tool to detect those at risk for dementia
  • Indicating the effectiveness of clinical trials
  • Associating with CSF biomarkers of disease
• Can I use any recorder to capture voice data for the UDSv4?

  While many devices will record voice data, NACC has certain requirements for recording UDSv4 voice data:

  • Zoom H4N recorders are preferred
  • Limited background noise
  • At the beginning of the recording state staff ID, participant ID, study visit date and number, and what is being recorded
• Not all recorders are encrypted which may pose a significant risk should it be lost/misplaced if it contains PHI. Does this concern mean that only the more expensive, encrypted recorders should be used?

  This will be up to your local institution and ADRC. Your institution may want to adopt best practices such as;

  • Immediately upon the visit/recording&aposs termination, upload the file to a secure cloud server and delete it from the recording device.
  • If you are capturing digital voice on an iPhone there are ways to encrypt files using that device.

  There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach; however, each method will have its own issues and concerns with relation to privacy and security.

• Do I need to process the voice data at my ADRC?

  While all ADRCs are encouraged to keep voice files for their own use, all voice data will be uploaded to NACC

  • Use NACC naming conventions: NACCID_DATE_TESTNAME
  • Store in WAV format
  • Enter meta-data of the test in UDSv4 dVoice form (under development)
• What is UDSv4 dVoice form?

  This is a form that is under development that will accompany any voice data uploads; it includes but is not limited to the following:

  • NACC ID
  • Tester ID
  • Recording Date
  • Name of file with full path
  • Recording device details
  • QC details
• How do you separate multiple speakers’ voices to focus on the participant’s voice?

  Sometimes it might be good to analyze ‘conversations’ however, automated methods are increasingly available and efficient in ‘cleaning’ vocal recordings down to a single speaker of interest.

• What is the process for scrubbing an audio file to remove PHI? Who is handling that task?

  De-identification tools are in process for voice masking (e.g., Whisper) and PII splicing; however, NACC will not share any vocal data until such de-identification processes are validated and complete on all vocal recordings. Given there are multiple levels of de-identification, exploration of all levels is underway. The most important is to de-identify the voice prints themselves; estimated voice masking technology deliverables may be as early as 2025 with at least some level of PHI removal.

• Is there a standard file type (WAV vs MP3) and bit-rate, bit depth minimums?

  Google has speech to text tool with their own recommendations which can be found here.

  Specific recommendations and details will come from the work group in the future, however, some general information is outlined below:

  • Generally speaking, at least 16KHz WAV PCM16le, 16bit depth with 256kb/s bit rate would be roughly the minimum. We at FHS record at a high level of quality, which may likely not be the necessary minimum (48KHz, WAV PCM24le, ~2000kb/s, 24 bit depth stereo, results in about 1 GB per 1 hour)
  • Depending upon the platform available to you, there are compromises that will need to be made (e.g., Zoom does not save to .wav formats), however, it should not prohibit you from collecting voice recordings should you wish.
• Will there be measures taken to protect the neuropsychological recordings? Neuropsychologists are advised to prevent the release of stimulus materials, test procedures, etc. of neuropsychological data. Having these things recorded allows for the potential release of this information. In addition to the NACC Battery, some sites may include copyright protected measures in their site-specific battery. What steps can be taken to protect the collection of that specific copyright materials? Can we opt out of recording those measures?

  Just like you get a clinical read of a scan, you can get a clinical read of vocal recordings and thus, only share agreed upon metrics and that is what is recorded and shared. Thus, the data files may not need to be shared at the raw form level.