Researchers have found out that artificial intelligence (AI) could possibly predict Alzheimer’s disease seven years quicker than doctors.

By analyzing voice samples of people describing a drawing, the AI system would be able to detect changes in the speech – such as sentence structure and grammatical mistake – to recognize cognitive decline. This test has already been used to diagnose dementia and other cognitive illnesses in the past.

However, it is believed that this AI model could also apply it to Alzheimer’s with a 70% accuracy.  This is something that could revolutionize the treatments, support, and guidance of people suffering from these illnesses as well as improve their quality of life.

The system used sampled from a US research project in operation since 1948, hence, the AI machines were able to analyze various samples from participants who were still cognitively healthy.  Researchers then compared the predictions about if someone would develop the illness later in life to what actually happened.

This could represent an important further step in the use of AI and language to have more accurate diagnoses and much earlier in time. There is still a need to test these methods on larger and diverse groups, but this is already an improvement for the future of medicine.