[June 28, 2016] |
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Sonde Health Advances Novel Vocal Biomarker Analysis Platform
Sonde
Health Inc., a company developing a voice-based technology platform
for monitoring and diagnosing mental and physical medical conditions,
today announced an exclusive license to an award-winning health
monitoring audio analysis technology. The technology, licensed from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT (News - Alert)) Lincoln Laboratory, is
designed to enable analysis of brief voice samples to screen and monitor
for a range of mental and physical medical concerns based on subtle
changes in acoustic characteristics of the speaker's voice. Sonde's
focus areas include mental health conditions like depression as well as
a number of other mental health, respiratory and cardiovascular
conditions where remote, passive monitoring could be impactful.
Saying a single phrase requires complex coordination of multiple neural
circuits in the brain, precise control of the respiratory system, and
carefully timed and coordinated activation of the musculoskeletal system
elements that control articulation along the entire vocal tract.
Disease-specific disruptions in any one (or more) of these systems
produce subtle, but characteristic changes in the non-linguistic
features of the voice that are consistent across individuals and can be
analyzed computationally.
"The ability to help recognize early signs of psychiatric illness and
monitor treatment responses on devices that people already own is an
important step in moving from reactive to preventive care," said Aimee
Danielson, Ph.D., Director, Women's Mental Health Program at MedStar
Georgetown University Hospital. "This would be particularly useful in
conditions that are chronically underdiagnosed, like perinatal mood and
anxiety disorders, including postpartum depression, and in other mental
health and central nervous system disorders where there is a lack of
objective and reliable screening and monitoring technologies."
The licensed technology was created by a team led by Thomas Quatieri,
Ph.D., at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (News - Alert), and won the most recent Audio/Visual
Emotion Challenge (AVEC) sub-challenges for depression award (http://sspnet.eu/avec2013/,
http://sspnet.eu/avec2014/)
demonstrating best-in-class accuracy for recognizing depression in
individuals and estimating the severity of their symptoms from brief
samples of speech. Pilot studies using the same core technology have
also demonstrated the potential to detect and objectively measure
symptoms in a range of important conditions including depression, mild
traumatic brain injury (mTBI), concussion, cognitive impairment and
Parkinson's disease. Growing evidence suggests that a much wider range
of mental and physical health conditions impact the major systems
involved in speech production and produce distinct vocal biomarkers that
may extend the utility of this technology platform far beyond these
initial demonstrations.
"Sonde is developing the technology platform to extract clinically
meaningful health inforation from everyday voice interactions people
have on a range of devices they already own," said Jim Harper,
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Sonde Health. "The analysis
does not require the content of the speech to be retained, and can
readily support the strong security and privacy features users demand
with regard to potentially sensitive health information."
The licensed MIT Lincoln Laboratory technology uses computer analysis of
non-linguistic vocal characteristics (e.g., dynamic changes in pitch and
harmonics, articulation timing and hoarseness or breathiness) to define
objective "vocal biomarkers" that potentially signal changes in health
or disease status for a range of conditions. Importantly, the biomarker
analysis is achieved without examining the content or meaning of the
speech being analyzed. This enables strong privacy and security to be
built into Sonde's products from the start.
Sonde is collaborating with distinguished experts in the areas of
population health, mental health, disease monitoring and information
technology. The company's newly appointed clinical and commercial
advisors include:
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Maurizio Fava, M.D. - Director of the Division of Clinical Research of
the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Research institute, Executive
Vice Chair of the MGH Department Psychiatry, Executive Director of the
MGH Clinical Trials Network & Institute (CTNI), a Harvard teaching
hospital; associate member of the Broad Institute's Stanley Center for
Psychiatric Research; Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School. Dr. Fava has received several awards, including the
2015 Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) Senior
Investigator Gerald L. Klerman Award. He is the immediate past
president of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology and
is on the editorial board of five international medical journals,
including the Journal of Affective Disorders and the Journal of
Clinical Psychiatry.
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Aimee Danielson, Ph.D. - Founder and Director of the Women's Mental
Health Program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, an
outpatient treatment program in Washington, DC, devoted exclusively to
treating perinatal psychiatric disorders. Dr. Danielson is an
Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Georgetown University
School of Medicine, and actively involved in medical education. She
teaches medical students, residents and fellows about women's mental
health, including the motherhood transition and perinatal psychiatric
disorders. Dr. Danielson is co-founder of the DC Women's Reproductive
Mental Health Consortium and also an active member of the DC
Collaborative for Mental Health in Pediatric Primary Care.
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Harry Leider, M.D., MBA - Chief Medical Officer and Group Vice
President of Walgreens. Before joining Walgreens, Dr. Leider was Chief
Medical Officer of Ameritox, and prior to that he was Chief Medical
Officer of XLHealth. Leider also served as the Chief Medical Officer
for HealthNet and was a physician executive at Harvard Pilgrim Health
Plan. Dr. Leider is on the editorial boards of Physician Executive
and the Journal of Population Health Management. He is also a
founding board member of the Disease Management Association of America
(DMAA) and served on the board of the Institute of Aging at the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lieder also served for six years as an
attending physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and faculty member
at Harvard Medical School, and more recently as a faculty member at
the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.
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Helen Christensen, Ph.D. - Director and Chief Scientist of the Black
Dog Institute; Professor of Mental Health at the University of New
South Wales; National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) John
Cade Research Fellow; member of the Academy of Social Sciences,
Australia; past President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric
Research; immediate past President of the International Society for
Research in Internet Interventions. Dr. Christensen is also the Chief
Investigator for the NHMRC Clinical Research Centre for Excellence in
Suicide Prevention.
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Ian Gotlib, Ph.D. - David Starr Jordan Professor and Chair of the
Department of Psychology at Stanford University and Director of the
Stanford Mood and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory. Dr. Gotlib studies
depression and risk for disorder in children, adolescents and adults.
He has received the Distinguished Investigator Award from the National
Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, the
Joseph Zubin Award for lifetime research contributions to the
understanding of psychopathology, the APA Award for Distinguished
Scientific Contribution and the APS Distinguished Scientist Award.
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Julien Epps, Ph.D. - Associate Professor in Signal Processing with the
School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW
Australia and Contributed Principal Researcher with Data61, CSIRO,
Australia.
About Sonde Health Sonde
Health is a PureTech
(PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L) initiative developing a voice-based
technology platform with the potential to transform the way mental and
physical health is monitored and diagnosed. Sonde is advancing its
proprietary technology developed internally and licensed from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory that has
demonstrated potential to effectively screen and monitor for disease
using information obtained from the voice.
Forward Looking Statement This press release contains
statements that are or may be forward-looking statements, including
statements that relate to the company's future prospects, developments
and strategies. The forward-looking statements are based on current
expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks and
uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance and
achievements to differ materially from current expectations, including,
but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties described in the risk
factors included in the regulatory filings for PureTech Health plc.
These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the
present and future business strategies of the company and the
environment in which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking
statement speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as
required by law and regulatory requirements, neither the company nor any
other party intends to update or revise these forward-looking
statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or
otherwise.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160627006347/en/
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