Voice biomarker platform Sonde Health raises $19.25M to spread access to mental health monitoring and beyond

Voice analy­sis plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M (Mobi­Health­News):

AI-enabled voice tech­nol­o­gy plat­form Sonde Health announced it raised $19.25 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round led by Part­ners Invest­ment, bring­ing its total raise to $35.25 mil­lion … Sonde Health uses patent­ed voice tech­nol­o­gy to detect var­i­ous health con­di­tions from bio­mark­ers in a per­son­’s voice, includ­ing ana­lyz­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry fit­ness and detect­ing depres­sion and anxiety.

The fund­ing will help build out the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy to detect addi­tion­al health con­di­tions, expand its cur­rent res­pi­ra­to­ry and men­tal health-mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies, and dri­ve glob­al com­mer­cial growth.

“Dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers are becom­ing a main­stay in health­care. Today’s health­care com­pa­nies are real­iz­ing how vocal bio­mark­ers can engage peo­ple ear­li­er in their health. The data and insights found in voice can pow­er health mon­i­tor­ing and patient strat­i­fi­ca­tion so issues can become appar­ent well before a cost­ly med­ical event occurs,” David Liu, CEO of Sonde Health, said in a state­ment. “With voice and any lis­ten­ing device, acces­si­ble and effec­tive health mon­i­tor­ing can be made avail­able to the major­i­ty of the world.”

The Announcement:

Sonde Health Rais­es $19.25 Mil­lion Series B to Build the Next Gen­er­a­tion of Voice-Based Health Mon­i­tor­ing (press release):

Sonde Health, a health tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny com­mit­ted to bring­ing acces­si­ble health mon­i­tor­ing to every­one, has raised a $19.25 mil­lion Series B invest­ment round … The com­pa­ny has raised $35.25 mil­lion in total and will use the fund­ing to dri­ve its glob­al com­mer­cial growth, deep­en its res­pi­ra­to­ry and men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing tech­nolo­gies, and build capa­bil­i­ties for addi­tion­al health conditions.

Sonde licens­es its plat­form to cus­tomers glob­al­ly in two ways:

Health Checks

• Res­pi­ra­to­ry Fit­ness: Sonde’s plat­form can detect and mon­i­tor res­pi­ra­to­ry health con­di­tions, like asth­ma, from 6 sec­onds of voice. Patients are engag­ing with Sonde’s res­pi­ra­to­ry fit­ness health checks 2+ times per week.
• Men­tal Fit­ness: Sonde’s plat­form can detect and mon­i­tor evi­dence of depres­sion and anx­i­ety from 30 sec­onds of voice. Patients are engag­ing with Sonde’s men­tal fit­ness health checks 3+ times per week.

Vocal Bio­mark­er Development

• MCI, COPD, Gen­er­al Health: Sonde is devel­op­ing nov­el vocal bio­mark­ers using its pro­pri­etary “research-build-val­i­da­tion” method­ol­o­gy with clin­i­cal partners.

… GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets. Koye Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which had already engaged Sonde to devel­op a COPD vocal bio­mark­er, has expand­ed the part­ner­ship to devel­op a nov­el men­tal health vocal bio­mark­er for deploy­ment in India.

News in Context:

• Ful­ly-auto­mat­ed analy­sis of voice recordings–from neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests–found to help dif­fer­en­ti­ate nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia and mild cog­ni­tive impairment
• Start­up Aur­al Ana­lyt­ics rais­es $4.3M to mon­i­tor neu­ro­log­i­cal health by ana­lyz­ing speech patterns