Sbir phase I: voxcare: artificial intelligence-based monitoring for substance use indicators in youth

This $275,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through its Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program supports the development of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based mobile app technology called VoxCare. The goal of this project is to create a system that can assess drug use or alcohol intoxication in youth based on analyzing voice signals. The technology aims to leverage unique voice signal characteristics associated with neuromotor impairment from substance use in order to provide early detection capabilities and help address the significant public health and economic burden of substance abuse disorders. This Phase I effort will advance research into AI, digital media data collection, synthetic audio modeling, and voice analysis techniques to enable the VoxCare product. The work is being performed by the small business Tenvos Inc., a minority and woman-owned firm, over an 18-month project period concluding in September 2024.

Abstract

The broader impact of this small business innovation research (SBIR) phase I project is to reduce the $740B a year burden of substance use. Healthcare costs, crime, and lost productivity are only a fraction of the problem that has claimed over 100,000 lives in 2021 alone. The proposed innovation is a novel AI-based technology integrated into a mobile APP that allows the assessment of drug use or alcohol intoxication based on voice signals. Substance and alcohol use disorders are prevalent across every stratum of our society. Not only are the users impacted, but the penumbra of individuals impacted includes every citizen in the US. Preventing early exposure to illicit drugs and alcohol lowers the likelihood of developing severe addiction later in life. By disrupting normal brain development, various substances increase the long-term negative effects on a child?S life. Given the skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers, the wide availability of highly potent synthetic substances, and the ease of access to drugs, parents feel ILL-equipped to protect their children. This small business innovation research phase 1 project will help advance knowledge in several important areas, such as artificial intelligence capabilities, leveraging digital media platforms for data collection, synthetic audio data generation, and using the mix of temporal and spectral domains for audio analysis. Each area is an active research field, but the combination of all these areas into a product for analyzing voice to detect intoxication caused by various substances has not been previously attempted by academia or industry. The company?S technology relies on the unique impact that each substance use has on neuromotor function, as manifested by the BIO-mechanical process of voice production. By comparing the voice signal against the speakers? Baseline voice, the technology will flag abnormal deviations of acoustic features that are typically consistent with intoxication. The field of voice analysis integrates a range of features and signal characteristics to extract valuable insights from voice signals. The primary objectives are to develop and deploy this AI-based technology in ubiquitous devices such as mobile phones while ensuring its performance in real-life conditions and achieving soft real-time processing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.