Unfazed by Brexit, PureTech launches Sonde voice diagnostics firm

June 28, 2016 By Brad Perriello Leave a Comment

Life sciences incubator PureTech Health (LON:PRTC), unfazed by the worldwide impact of the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union, announced its latest venture today: Sonde Health, which aims to use a voice-based technology to diagnose mental and physical ailments.

Based on technology licensed from the Mass. Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, Sonde’s device is designed to analyze short vocal samples to screen for conditions based on acoustic changes.

“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,” co-founder & COO Jim Harper said in prepared remarks. “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 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,” added MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s Aimee Danielson. “This would be particularly useful in conditions that are chronically under-diagnosed, 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 MIT technology uses a computer to evaluate non-linguistic vocal characteristics such as changes in pitch and harmonics, articulation timing and hoarseness or breathiness. The analysis is then used to create “vocal biomarkers” that could indicate changes in a patient’s health; that means that strong privacy and security protections can be built into the system, Sonde said.

PureTech, which raised $171 million last year in its initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange, is 1 of the few British companies whose share price rose after the Brexit vote. PRTC shares were up 5.7% to £1.53 apiece today in late-day trading in The City.

Certain GE Healthcare patient-monitoring devices vulnerable to cyberattack
The federal government and GE Healthcare (NYSE:GE) announced today that the certain of the company’s patient monitoring devices are vulnerable to cyberattack. If attacked, some versions of the Carescape and ApexPro telemetry servers, the Carescape Central Station version 1 and Central Information Center systems could stop monitoring patients, silence alarms or produce unnecessary alarms during… […]
Cardinal Health recalls 9 million surgical gowns, sends hospitals scrambling
Cardinal Health (NYSE:CAH) announced that it is voluntarily recalling 9.1 million surgical gowns produced by an unnamed contract manufacturer after discovering quality issues with the product. The Dublin, Ohio-based company said that some gowns were produced in unapproved locations that did not maintain proper environmental conditions as required by law. Some of the gowns were also… […]
KNF launches compact swing piston pump
KNF Neuberger is touting its NPK 06 swing piston micro gas pumps, designed to deliver high-flow and high-pressure performance in a compact size. The new pumps work well for medical diagnostics, therapy, monitoring, and general compression applications, according to the Trenton, N.J.-based company. NPK 06 measures 1.85” (47mm) wide and can produce free flow up… […]
Heraeus Medical Components and Myant partner on electrical sensing for textiles
Heraeus Medical Components (St. Paul, Minn.) and Toronto-based Myant have entered a partnership enabling Myant to use Heraeus’ Tectitoat for electrical sensing applications in textiles, the companies announced today. Tecticoat is a conductive polymer-based coating that can be applied to textiles to control electrical conductivity, electromagnetic shielding and electrostatic dissipation, making it suitable for integration… […]
Cook Medical’s peripheral artery set debuts in U.S.
Cook Medical recently announced the U.S. launch of its TriForce peripheral crossing set to support vascular obstruction procedures. The TriForce set is designed to be percutaneously introduced into blood vessels to support a wire guide while performing a peripheral intervention, according to the Bloomington, Ind.-based company. This device is also intended for injection of radiopaque… […]
Bayer and Exscientia partner to bring AI to drug discovery
Bayer (ETR:BAYN) announced that it is entering into a collaboration agreement with artificial intelligence drug discovery company Exscientia to identify and optimize novel lead structures for potential drug candidates in treating cardiovascular and oncological diseases. The agreement, announced earlier this month, is slated to see the companies work together on early research projects combining Exscientia’s proprietary… […]
GHO Capital acquires Ardena
European specialist investor Global Healthcare Opportunities, also called GHO Capital Partners, recently announced that it has acquired Ardena — a specialist contract development and manufacturing organization focused on early phase drug development. Financial terms of the deal, announced Jan. 9, were not disclosed. Get the full story on sister site Drug Discovery and Development. The […]
Albright Silicone launches 3D printed tooling for silicone molding
Albright Silicone (Leominster, Mass.) recently announced that it has added 3D printed tooling for LSR molding, touting the relative low coast and rapid turnaround the process offers for prototyping. “This capability of 3D printing and molding LSR is a helpful solution to customers’ problems when trying to develop and prove a concept before investing in… […]
BREAKING: Medtronic wins FDA approval for Micra AV
Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) has won FDA approval for its Micra AV — greatly expanding the number of people who could potentially benefit from leadless pacemaker technology. The medical device giant plans to start offering the Micra AV in a limited number of implanting centers in the coming weeks, with a full launch expected in the spring. FDA… […]
FDA reclassifies some medical image analyzers
The FDA today imposed stricter regulations on certain radiological medical image analyzers, reclassifying them from Class III to Class II. Affected products include computer-assisted detection (CADe) devices for breast cancer mammography, breast-lesion ultrasound, and lung-nodule and dental-caries radiography, the agency said. It defines these devices as those intended to identify, mark, highlight, or in any… […]
Medline Industries temporarily halts EtO sterilization at Illinois plant
This article has been updated with a comment from Medela. Medline Industries has temporarily closed its Waukegan, Ill., medical device sterilization operation to install nearly $10 million in emissions upgrades. The privately owned company uses the carcinogenic gas ethylene oxide (EtO) to sterilize its own and other companies’ devices at the plant. Medline did not… […]