Automated cough detection systems: VitaloJAK

Is the automated cough detection system commercially available and useful for clinicians outside specialist centers?

Imran Satia: The cough monitor which has been developed by professor Jacky Smith, professor Ashley Woodcock, and Kevin McGuinness is called VitaloJAK. It is not a fully automated cough monitor. It is an ambulatory cough monitor which you wear. It has a microphone just like this and a chest sensor. You can wear it for 24 hours and this will record all sounds. After 24 hours of recording, the data will be put through a software algorithm that is able to delete out any noncough sounds, and the 24 hours are then cut down into a file, which may be an hour to an hour and a half. Thereafter, we have trained cough counters who will listen to that 1.5-hour recording and mark every single cough occurring in those times, and this is a very sensitive and specific way of quantifying cough. It is not fully automated; it is a semi-automated system for monitoring cough.

At the moment it is available commercially for studies. There is a limited number of cough monitors that we have and these are made by Vitalograph. At the moment we are not using it for clinical purposes, just because it is not something which is available for clinical use but mainly for research and commercial use.