Strategy& (PwC)

Strategy& Insider Podcast - Episode 46 with Lara Gervaise and Edoardo Guidice

The Strategy& Insider podcast featured Lara Gervaise and Edoardo Guidice, co‑founders of Vuosis AI, a Swiss EPFL spin‑off that uses voice analysis to flag early signs of fatal diseases, burnout and cognitive decline. Vuosis AI’s platform extracts hundreds of acoustic features—tone, intonation, rhythm—from a 30‑second natural speech sample and runs them through AI models trained on healthy and diseased cohorts. The system can assess up to 25 conditions, from neuro‑degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s to mental‑health issues and even cardiac or metabolic diseases. Lara highlighted that the technology can detect Parkinson’s up to seven years before tremors, with 96% sensitivity and specificity, while depression detection sits around 77‑83%. Edoardo emphasized the rapid AI development cycle—three months comparable to three years in other tech—and the model’s language‑agnostic, paraverbal design that preserves privacy. If scaled, the tool could shift diagnostics from invasive tests to passive, ubiquitous monitoring, lowering costs and expanding early‑intervention opportunities worldwide. Partnerships with Microsoft and interest from health insurers suggest a fast‑moving market, though challenges remain in multilingual validation and regulatory approval.