WASHINGTON DC, February 20, 2020
Winterlight presented new research from a longitudinal study of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) today at the 16th Annual Meeting of the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology.
In this ongoing study, individuals with MCI and AD completed a Winterlight speech assessment and neuropsychological tests at a baseline visit and again 6 months later. After 6 months, we found significant declines in language scores relating to the informativeness and coherence of speech. In contrast, we found no significant changes in neuropsychological tests over the same period.
Together these results indicate that changes to speech might be detectable on a shorter time scale than changes in standard neuropsychological measures. This study adds to a growing body of research showing that speech-based biomarkers may offer increased sensitivity for detecting changes to language and cognition.
Winterlight Labs is commercializing a proprietary language-based diagnostic system that analyzes natural speech to detect and monitor dementia, Alzheimer’s, aphasia, and various other cognitive conditions. Winterlight's scalable platform uses short recorded speech samples to analyze hundreds of linguistic cues, and can detect dementia and other conditions with a high level of accuracy. This is a major improvement over current pencil-and-paper tests which are time-consuming, costly, and difficult to administer. The platform has applications in drug trials, long-term and primary care, and speech-language pathology.
Since its founding, Winterlight Labs has seen strong interest from pharmaceutical companies and other potential partners who view the technology as a major improvement over current methods of detection or screening. The company has gained support from the pan-Canadian AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE), the Ontario Brain Institute, Ontario Centres of Excellence, and the University of Toronto Banting and Best Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. For more information, visit www.winterlightlabs.com.
Media Inquiries:
Winterlight Labs
Liam Kaufman, CEO
liam [at] winterlightlabs.com