Use of Data for Research Purposes

Date: Sept 1, 2022

We are asking your permission to use your data for the purposes of exploratory research studies. Cough patterns over time and space, as well as the acoustic characteristics of coughs, can help provide useful data for health research purposes. Regardless of whether you would like to share your data with researchers or not, you can use CoughPro. There is no obligation to share your data with researchers.

Research purpose

Data collected via CoughPro may: 
(a) help researchers better understand the relationship between cough onset and illness, and 
(b) help identify potential respiratory illness outbreaks. These methods have not yet been demonstrated, and should, therefore, be considered experimental.

Steps and data

If you are willing to have your data used for research purposes, this will not change your experience with or use of CoughPro. We will collect location, sound, and metadata as usual. In the case that you give permission for your data to be used for research, we may provide health researchers with: (a) the putative cough sounds (audio files of 0.5 seconds) generated from your use of CoughPro, (b) the time at which those sounds occurred, (c) an anonymous ID number so that researchers know which coughs came from which individuals, (d) your location details, offset randomly so that your exact location is not identifiable, and (e) information about your device. Additionally, for the purposes of validating model accuracy and quantifying microphone sensitivity, we may record and retain randomly sampled, non-consecutive audio files of up to 30 seconds in length, taken solely from those periods during which you have activated cough tracking. These samples will never be shared with external researchers, but may be examined for internal analysis and quality improvement. We will promptly delete any data collected from you upon request or if you revoke granting this permission.
In the future, we may contact you via the app to request supplemental information. You are not obligated to respond. At any point, you can opt out, after which time you will no longer be contacted

Benefits

No individual benefits are expected for subjects who participate in this research. However, the findings of cough-related studies may help allow for early disease detection and improved public health surveillance.

Risks

Because using this app (and by extension, participating in studies based on the use of this app) involves producing 3 coughs during the onboarding phase, there is a risk of spreading germs. To reduce this risk, we ask the study participant to produce the sounds away from other humans and to disinfect surfaces upon finishing. The participant can wear a mask while recording if they prefer.

Privacy

For full details on privacy, please read our Privacy Policy

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