Combining Wearables and Voice Biomarkers: An Open Call for Research

Physiological signals tell you that something changed. Voice can help explain why.

Wearables capture what the body is doing: heart rate variability, respiratory patterns, activity, sleep architecture. Voice carries its own signal, with changes in breath support, phonation, and acoustic features that correlate with cardiopulmonary status, fatigue, neurological state, and more. Collecting both simultaneously, in real-world conditions, opens a class of research that neither modality enables alone.

That's the premise of this grant. Labfront and Zana are jointly funding studies that combine continuous wearable-derived physiological data with voice-based digital biomarkers. We're looking for researchers who have a study design to match.

Two research tracks

Applications are open across two research tracks:

Cardiopulmonary extension track

Build on Zana's validated voice biomarker domains by integrating continuous wearable physiological data. Relevant focus areas include COPD and respiratory disease monitoring, heart failure and cardiovascular conditions, early detection of decompensation or exacerbations, and multimodal validation of existing vocal biomarkers. The goal is to strengthen clinically validated use cases with richer, multimodal data.

Open innovation track

For researchers exploring domains where combining voice and physiological data may surface genuinely new insights. Areas of interest include mental health and stress, sleep, women's health, fatigue and recovery, neurological conditions, occupational health, and healthy population longitudinal studies. If you have a compelling rationale for a domain not listed here, make the case.

Grant tiers and award values

We're awarding multiple grants across four categories, scaled to study scope.

What researchers receive

The dollar values matter, but the more important asset is direct collaboration.

From Labfront, you get end-to-end infrastructure for continuous physiological data collection and EMA: participant management, scheduling, wearable data pipelines, and analytics reports covering HRV and actigraphy. You're not piecing together a data workflow mid-study.

From Zana, you get access to the VOICE-BIOME platform, pre-validated cardiopulmonary vocal biomarkers where applicable, and hands-on support from Zana's team across feature engineering, multimodal data fusion, machine learning strategy, and analysis outputs. If you're new to voice biomarkers, you're not navigating that alone.

Eligibility

We're looking for projects that:

• Integrate wearable and voice data with a clear rationale for why both modalities are needed
• Aim to move beyond correlation toward stratification or early detection
• Can realistically generate publishable findings within a reasonable study timeline

Bring a defined research question, not a general interest in the space. Studies at any stage are eligible, including proposals that add a voice biomarker arm to an ongoing study with minimal protocol amendments.

Apply before June 9

Applications are open now and close June 9, 2026.

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