Bay Area app uses AI to help people with early detection of ALS symptoms

A former tech executive who lost her husband to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, hopes her app will help people with the early detection of ALS symptoms.

These days, it's the little things Mindy Uhrlaub appreciates most: a quiet moment with her dog, coffee in hand, a few notes on the piano.

Ordinary things made extraordinary by what she knows could be coming.

"I wish I didn't have to think about this," she said. "But at the same time, I try not to let it consume my life."

Uhrlaub carries the gene for ALS, the neurodegenerative disease that took her mother. She doesn't have symptoms. But once a week, she logs onto a Bay Area-built app called EverythingALS, a tool designed to help doctors and families spot early signs of the disease, before symptoms fully take hold.

She reads a few lines aloud, and the app listens, trained to catch even the faintest slur or shift in speech.

The technology was created by Indu Navar, a former tech executive who turned grief into action after losing her husband, Peter, to ALS. His diagnosis came two years after his first symptoms. By then, most of his motor neurons were already gone.

"That's the time you're supposed to be doing something," Navar said.

In the U.S., someone is diagnosed with ALS every 90 minutes. But the path to diagnosis is often slow, taking months, even years. By the time it arrives, there's often little doctors can do.

Navar built EverythingALS to change that.

Powered by artificial intelligence, the app tracks speech, gait and motor function, flagging subtle changes that most humans would miss.

"AI has allowed us to predict changes in small variations that happen," Navar said.

Because it's remote, the tool also makes clinical trials more accessible, opening up ALS research to a wider and more diverse population than ever before.

The app has not yet been approved by the FDA, but early results are promising. As for Uhrlaub, taking back a little control has given her something else: a way to write her own story.

She recently finished a memoir called "Last Nerve" in May. 

"I enjoy every day of my life," she said. "I don't stay up at night worrying about stuff."