TORONTO, October 20, 2020
Winterlight Labs, in collaboration with Dr. John Harrison and Dr. Frank Rudzicz, published a new review article in the peer-reviewed journal, Digital Biomarkers. In this article, we review the utility of novel, speech-based digital measures for characterizing and monitoring disease in neurological and psychiatric diseases and disorders.
Based on recent publications from the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), we provide an overview of the stages of biomarker validation, including verification, analytical validation and clinical validation. For each component, we provide an overview of the current speech research landscape, and recommendations for future work. This paper provides a timely review of a quickly developing field that will guide future research and set a standard for speech-based biomarker validation.
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