In this video, Karen Eng speaks with MIT postdoc and TED Fellow Max Little, who on the opening Monday of TEDGlobal 2012 announced the launch of the Parkinson’s Voice Initiative — a voice-data gathering project that could lead to the development of early detection, better treatment and cure of the disease. In this interview, Max talks about this news, why the data is so important, and how it might be used.

When this video was shot on June 25, Max was thrilled to report that thanks to media coverage, his first project trial — asking people to make a 3-minute phone call into a global voice bank — was growing far faster than expected. The news spread so quickly, the project had already gathered 1,500 of the 10,000 target samples within 24 hours. We ran into him in the theater before Session 2, on Tuesday afternoon, and he confirmed that the project is now more than 25% full.

UPDATE: Max Little reports that the trial is now 50% full — which means more than 5,000 people have dialed in to take part.

There is still room for you to be a part of the trial, which will help lead to better diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Learn how: parkinsonsvoice.org/