Women raise their voices to advance cancer research

Think Pink Luxembourg’s joins Colive Voice efforts

• Colive Voice
• Cancer
• Department of Precision Health
• Deep Digital Phenotyping Research Unit

Colive Voice, an international digital health study led by the Luxembourg Institute of Health’s Deep Digital Phenotyping research unit, aims to identify vocal biomarkers for cancer and other chronic diseases. Colive Voice researchers expect that the use of voice will improve the remote management of cancer patients. Motivated by the implementation of an efficient voice surveillance system that will simplify the daily monitoring of cancer symptoms, the association Think Pink Luxembourg has decided to support the project.

Founded in October 2009 by a small group of volunteers whose lives have been touched by cancer either directly or through their families and friends, Think Pink Lux is an association that supports women living in Luxembourg with the day to day reality of cancer. Highly invested, the association’s main objectives are to raise awareness of cancers affecting women, to support women affected by cancer and their families and to raise funds to meet these objectives.

The organization participates in many events (ING Night Marathon, Relay for Life…) and organizes others (Think Pink Ladies Night, Coffee mornings…) in order to raise funds in Luxembourg for the activities of the association. However, a portion of the funds is dedicated to breast cancer research and grants to support young scientists in their cancer research with The Marian Aldred Scholarship Award.

Through the partnership, the organization is committed to raising awareness of the Colive Voice project among its members and supporting the recruitment of new participants with cancer. The association has already communicated about the project through messages on their social media channels and helped to raise awareness about the benefits of voice based monitoring for cancer patients in Luxembourg. This support is essential in order to recruit cancer patients for the study and to advance the identification of relevant vocal biomarkers to monitor this disease.

The identified vocal biomarkers could lead to concrete applications for cancer monitoring, for example by integrating voice-based monitoring into digital health applications or telemedicine solutions. Improving remote monitoring, management of cancer symptoms (fatigue, pain, loss of appetite, nausea, depression…) and the measure of the treatment efficiency would simplify monitoring and improve the quality of life of millions of people with cancer worldwide.

Think Pink Luxembourg provides us with essential support to recruit new participants and to advance the identification of vocal biomarkers related to cancer. We hope to be able to set up voice monitoring, for example via a medical application on a smartphone, in order to relieve patients and facilitate the treatment of this serious disease,

commented Dr. Guy Fagherazzi, Director of the Department of Precision Health and Principal Investigator of Colive Voice.

Think Pink Lux is a Luxembourg non-profit association started in 2009 by a group of volunteers, with the goal of supporting women living in Luxembourg with the day to day reality of cancer. Think Pink Lux aims to raise awareness of cancers affecting women and to support women and their families living in Luxembourg with cancer. Through the generous funding of its supporters, sponsors and donors Think Pink Luxembourg supports a number of activities: Support groups, the Think Pink Guide, the Marian Aldred Scholarship Award, health promotion and dedicated cancer awareness events for enterprises and organizations in Luxembourg.

To volunteer or make a donation https://thinkpinklux.com

Colive Voice is an international digital health research initiative that aims to improve diagnosis and monitoring of various chronic conditions (like diabetes, cancer, COVID-19) by evaluating voice features known as vocal biomarkers. This innovative study is led by the Deep Digital Phenotyping (DDP), a research unit of the Luxembourg Institute of Health. Participation is open to all adults and adolescents above 15 years of age regardless of their health status, and is done anonymously via a secure web application. Colive Voice is accessible from a smartphone, tablet, or laptop equipped with a microphone.

To participate, or for more information, visit https://www.colivevoice.org

The Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) is a public biomedical research organization focused on precision health and invested in becoming a leading reference in Europe for the translation of scientific excellence into meaningful benefits for patients.

LIH places the patient at the heart of all its activities, driven by a collective obligation towards society to use knowledge and technology arising from research on patient derived data to have a direct impact on people’s health. Its dedicated teams of multidisciplinary researchers strive for excellence, generating relevant knowledge linked to immune related diseases and cancer.

The institute embraces collaborations, disruptive technology and process innovation as unique opportunities to improve the application of diagnostics and therapeutics with the long-term goal of preventing disease.