TIDMPRTC
PureTech Health PLC
28 June 2016
28 June 2016
PureTech Health plc
PureTech Health's Sonde Advances Novel Vocal Biomarker Analysis
Platform
Sonde licenses MIT technology and collaborates with experts to
objectively diagnose and monitor medical conditions through vocal
cues
PureTech Health plc ("PureTech", LSE: PRTC), a
cross-disciplinary biotech company tackling fundamental healthcare
needs in disruptive ways, notes that Sonde Health Inc., a company
developing a voice-based technology platform for monitoring and
diagnosing mental and physical medical conditions, today announced
an exclusive licence to an award-winning health monitoring audio
analysis technology from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. The technology is designed
to analyse 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 - without requiring
the content or meaning of the speech being analysed. 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.
Daphne Zohar, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at
PureTech, said: "Sonde Health is targeting a major need as
healthcare moves towards a closed-loop system where remote disease
monitoring enables earlier intervention. Particularly in mental
health conditions which have a significant burden on our healthcare
system, the ability to monitor and intervene early could have a
significant impact on outcomes and healthcare costs."
The full text of the announcement from Sonde Health is as
follows:
Sonde Health Advances Novel Vocal Biomarker Analysis
Platform
Company licenses MIT technology and collaborates with experts to
objectively diagnose and monitor medical concerns through vocal
cues
Boston, Massachusetts, June 28, 2016 - Sonde Health Inc., a
company developing a voice-based technology platform for monitoring
and diagnosing mental and physical medical conditions, today
announced an exclusive licence to an award-winning health
monitoring audio analysis technology. The technology, licensed from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 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 analysed computationally.
"The ability to help recognise 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, PhD, 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, 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 recognising 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 information 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
analysed. 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:
-- 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.
-- 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.
-- 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.
-- 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.
-- 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.
-- 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.
PureTech Health plc (PRTC.L) owns 96% of the company on a
diluted basis as of December 31, 2015. This calculation includes
issued and outstanding shares as well as options to purchase shares
and written commitments to issue shares or options, but excludes
unallocated shares authorised to be issued pursuant to equity
incentive plans.
About PureTech Health
PureTech Health (PureTech Health plc, PRTC.L) is a
cross-disciplinary biotech company focused on areas of growing
scientific and technical insights that it believes are at an
important inflection point, including the central nervous,
gastro-intestinal and immune systems, and the interactions and
signalling between them. PureTech has approximately 20 clinical
studies across its pipeline targeting multi-billion dollar market
opportunities, including five human proof-of-concept studies and
multiple pivotal or registration study readouts expected in the
next two years. While inevitably some technologies will not advance
to commercialisation, PureTech's approach mitigates risk as most of
the cash resides on a PureTech parent company level, allowing
PureTech to build value and divert cash to its most successful
programs as milestones are achieved. PureTech has over 220 patents
and patent applications. PureTech's leading team and board, along
with an advisory network of more than 60 expert founder-scientists
and advisors across multiple disciplines, gives PureTech access to
potentially ground-breaking science and technological innovation.
With healthcare undergoing major transformation, PureTech believes
it is well positioned to develop and launch medicines for the 21st
century. For more information, visit www.puretechhealth.com and
connect with us on Twitter.
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.
Enquiries
PureTech
Allison Mead, Associate Director, +1 617 651
Communications and Investor Relations 3156
FTI Consulting (Communications adviser
to PureTech)
Ben Atwell +44 (0) 20
Matthew Cole 3727 1000
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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