As we continue strengthening health services through outstanding health research and public health programmes, Centre for infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) is proud of the progress made in partnership with the University of Sheffield’s School of Computer Science. This partnership aims to develop low-cost, scalable screening tools that are essential to effectively address the TB global health burden, especially in resource-constrained settings.
Through this partnership, CIDRZ is developing an AI-based screening tool that analyses cough sound recorded via a microphone. Using a state-of-the-art deep neural network classifier, this demonstrated the ability of the system to identify the characteristics of different cough sounds and accurately classify coughs associated with TB, other respiratory diseases and those from healthy individuals.