Development of Screening Methods for Early Neurodegeneration Using Mobile Phones
Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, affect a significant portion of the Czech Republic’s population, particularly the elderly. It is estimated that up to 150,000 people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and 30,000 to 50,000 people from Parkinson’s disease. Given the aging population and the rising incidence of these diseases, neurodegenerative disorders represent an increasingly serious health and social problem.
One of the biggest complications is late diagnosis. The disease often develops over a number of years before it is recognized and before available treatments—which tend to be most effective in the early stages—are initiated.
The neuroSHARE Remote project builds on successful pilot research conducted in the Czech Republic as part of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe) project. The goal of the research is to develop a screening method for the early detection and risk assessment of neurodegenerative diseases. The method utilizes the analysis of voice, speech, facial, auditory, and sleep characteristics, as well as color vision tests, all of which are obtained through short and simple tests.
To make the screening available to as wide a population as possible while keeping costs low, the test is being developed as an online version for smartphones.
As part of the bilateral cooperation between the Czech Republic and Switzerland, the methodology will be further developed, tested, and validated on representative samples of participants across countries and language groups. The project brings together experts in neurology, computer science, and the social sciences. Its goal is to create a comprehensive, scientifically validated, and widely applicable methodology for the noninvasive detection of early signs of neurodegeneration in the general population.
The methods developed can provide highly effective tools for identifying the risk of neurodegenerative diseases in people long before they would otherwise seek professional help. They can thus support the timely initiation of care and, ultimately, significantly extend the duration and improve the quality of an active life.
Abstract and Project Objectives
The neuroSHARE Remote project represents an innovative, highly scalable, low-cost solution to facilitate neuroprotective measures in population screening, disease-modifying trials, or personal therapy, in European and global ageing societies. The main contributions and advantages of the self-administered neuromarkers are:
- the tests are highly sensitive, targeting specific, state-of-the-art patterns of early neurodegeneration;
- provide superior specificity, as it is highly probable that the parallel decline of face, speech, language and smell function is related to the underlying neurodegeneration and not to other condition;
- are cost effective;
- have long lead time, as longitudinal speech, face, and smell changes in early neurodegeneration were estimated as the first signs to develop;
- are non-invasive, and
- the outcomes are computed automatically, allowing objectivity and further scalability.
The methodology will be tested on a pilot sample of SHARE-CZ and in a multilingual version in SHARE-CH. The main result will be data collection within the 11th wave of the SHARE project in Switzerland.
| Beneficiary | Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (SHARE-CZ) |
| Project partner(s) (Czech Republic) | Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague
First faculty of Medicine, Charles University |
| Project partner(s) (Switzerland) | Université Lausanne (UNIL) / Centre de compétences suisse en sciences sociales (FORS) |
| Project duration | 1.1.2026–31.12.2028 |
| Main project location | Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague |
| Project website | https://share.cerge-ei.cz/en/data/neuroshare/index.html |
| Website: The Second Swiss Contribution | https://www.swiss-contribution.cz/ |
| Total eligible project costs | CZK 33,965,000 |
| Of which 85% from the Swiss contribution | CZK 28,870,250 |
| Project ID | 8K0207 |
