Digital health company Linus Health has announced the acquisition of Aural Analytics, a provider of clinical-grade speech analytics.
Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.
This deal incorporates Aural Analytics' assets, including its advanced technology and intellectual property, into Linus Health's multimodal cognitive assessment platform.
Linus Health expects the acquisition to bolster its capabilities in identifying cognitive impairment, and expand operations into the life sciences industry.
Linus Health chief medical officer and co-founder Alvaro Pascual-Leone said: “Our voices reveal essential aspects of our mental state and brain function. Technology can extract such metrics with exquisite precision.
“Aural Analytics has worked in the development and processing of voice metrics, and integrating them with other signals captured by the Linus Health platform will substantially expand our unique brain health assessment capabilities.”
Aural Analytics' software, Speech Vitals, operates through app-based tests that collect speech samples from patients, which are then evaluated to assess various cognitive conditions.
The patented technology of Speech Vitals has been used in detecting neurological conditions such as dementia, autism, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
This complements Linus Health's existing digital cognitive assessment tools, including the Digital Clock and Recall (DCR).
Linus Health CEO and co-founder David Bates said: “Thanks to the nature of software, our platform can distribute new, advanced and validated digital diagnostics to the market globally with unprecedented speed.
“As with any chronic illness, earlier detection of brain-related disabilities allows for intervention that can delay, modify or even prevent progression of the disease. It’s why we are engineering the most inclusive approach to assessing and monitoring brain function, one that includes speech and movement, in addition to memory and other neurological functions.”
Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration granted Speech Vitals as a breakthrough device for ALS treatment.
