Israel-based early-stage AI healthtech firms Beyond Verbal and Healthymize have merged to create a new combined company Vocalis Health, which will focus on vocal biomarkers.
The joint company Vocalis Health, planned to be based in Newton, Massachusetts, US and Israel, will receive a $9m investment from funds led by aMoon, an Israeli healthtech and life sciences fund.
Vocalis Health is expected to use the proceeds to recruit additional talent, enhance voice database and authorise its offering through clinical trials.
aMoon managing director Roy Wiesner said: “The merger of Beyond Verbal and Healthymize sets a precedent for early-stage start-ups in the Israeli market. We quickly realized the opportunity of combining forces by leveraging their joint datasets, pipelines, strengths and talents, to create a leader in the vocal biomarkers space.”
Vocalis Health to develop AI platform to enable healthcare providers to remotely interact with patients
Vocalis Health will develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform that analyses voice to assess the health status of a person.
The technology facilitates healthcare providers to remotely interact with patients for screening and monitoring patients with a variety of voice-affecting diseases, including chronic respiratory or cardiac conditions or depression.
The early clinical data is claimed to demonstrate the capability of Vocalis Health in triaging and monitoring chronic patients.
Under the terms of the merger agreement, Beyond Verbal president and CEO Tal Wenderow will be appointed as president and CEO of the combined company, while Healthymize co-founder and CEO Shady Hassan will be its chief medical officer and COO.
Beyond Verbal said that the voice technology would enable the passive and consistent monitoring of health and offers valuable information to patients, healthcare providers and caregivers.
Healthymize said that the combination of both the companies will maximise the efforts to generate new clinical data, along with the development of new vocal biomarkers in other fields including congestive heart failure (CHF), sleep apnea, neurological disorders, and mental health.
The merger and funding are planned to be closed before the end of 2019. Vocalis Health is expected to advance its vocal biomarkers platform, secure regulatory approvals, and commercialise its product offering in 2020.
