Deriving geographic distribution of physiological or psychological conditions of human speakers while preserving personal privacy
View Patent ↗A method including: obtaining, via a plurality of communication devices, a plurality of speech signals respectively associated with human speakers, the speech signals including verbal components and non-verbal components; identifying a plurality of geographical locations, each geographic location associated with a respective one of the plurality of the communication devices; extracting the non-verbal components from the obtained speech signals; deducing physiological or psychological conditions of the human speakers by analyzing, over a specified period, the extracted non-verbal components, using predefined relations between characteristics of the non-verbal components and physiological or psychological conditions of the human speakers; and providing a geographical distribution of the deduced physiological or psychological conditions of the human speakers by associating the deduced physiological or psychological conditions of the human speakers with geographical locations thereof.
1. A method comprising:
for each speech signal of a plurality of speech signals:
obtaining, by a computer, non-verbal components of the speech signal and a geographical location associated with the speech signal, the speech signal having been de-identified;
deducing, by the computer, a physiological and/or psychological condition corresponding to the non-verbal components; and
associating the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition with the respective geographical location of the obtained speech signal,
thereby providing a geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions.
2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein deducing further comprises using, at least in part, characteristics of the non-verbal components of the speech signal and/or information relating to physiological and/or psychological conditions of human speakers.
3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein deducing comprises evaluating information that specifies relationships between the characteristics of the non-verbal components of the speech signal and the physiological and/or the psychological condition of a human speaker associated with the speech signal.
4. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising outputting the geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions and of human speakers associated with the physiological and/or psychological conditions at least by outputting an alarm if at least one criterion is met.
5. The method according to claim 2 , further comprising outputting the geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions and of human speakers associated with the physiological and/or psychological conditions.
6. The method according to claim 1 , wherein obtaining is performed for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals in at least two time-defined instances, thereby presenting a historical geographical distribution, by presenting, for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals, a change of the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition, over the at least two time-defined instances, in view of the geographical location thereof.
7. The method according to claim 1 , wherein obtaining further comprises obtaining the speech signal and extracting the non-verbal components from the speech signal, by the computer.
8. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the speech signal having been de-identified comprises the speech signal having underwent time-domain scrambling and/or frequency-domain filtering.
9. The method according to claim 1 , wherein obtaining further comprises obtaining the geographical location from at least one telephone communication network.
10. A system comprising:
a computer configured to, for each speech signal of a plurality of speech signals:
obtain non-verbal components of the speech signal and a geographical location associated with the speech signal, the speech signal having been de-identified;
deduce a physiological and/or psychological condition corresponding to the non-verbal components; and
associate the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition with the respective geographical location of the obtained speech signal,
thereby providing a geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions.
11. The system according to claim 10 , wherein the computer is further configured to obtain the geographical location and the speech signal from at least one communication network.
12. The system according to claim 10 , wherein the computer is further configured to deduce the physiological and/or the psychological condition based, at least in part, on information about human respiratory systems.
13. The system according to claim 10 , wherein the computer is further configured to associate characteristics of the non-verbal components of the speech signal and the physiological and/or the psychological condition with effects of a particular health condition of a human speaker on the non-verbal components of a speech signal associated with the human speaker.
14. The system according to claim 10 , wherein the computer is further configured to, for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals, associate the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition with the geographical location in at least two time-defined instances, and thereby to present a historical geographical distribution, by presenting, for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals, a change of the physiological and/or psychological condition, over the at least two time-defined instances, in view of the geographical location thereof.
15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions that, when executed by a processor, perform a method comprising:
for each speech signal of a plurality of speech signals:
obtaining non-verbal components of the speech signal and a geographical location associated with the speech signal, the speech signal having been de-identified;
deducing a physiological and/or psychological condition corresponding to the non-verbal components; and
associating the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition with the respective geographical location of the obtained speech,
thereby providing a geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions.
16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises deducing, at least in part, characteristics of the non-verbal components of the speech signal and/or information relating to physiological and/or psychological conditions of human speakers.
17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 16 , wherein the method further comprises associating the characteristics of the non-verbal components of the speech signal and the physiological and/or the psychological condition with effects of a particular health condition of a human speaker on the non-verbal components of a speech signal associated with the human speaker.
18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises outputting the geographical distribution of the physiological and/or psychological conditions and of human speakers associated with the physiological and/or psychological conditions.
19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises obtaining, for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals, the speech signal in at least two time-defined instances, the thereby presenting a historical geographical distribution, by presenting, for each speech signal of the plurality of speech signals, a change of the deduced physiological and/or psychological condition, over the at least two time-defined instances, in view of the geographical location thereof.
20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 15 , wherein the method further comprises obtaining the geographical location from at least one telephone communication network.