Sonde Health

Sonde Health, a Boston-based health technology company founded in 2015, operates at the intersection of voice technology and health monitoring. The company was co-founded by James Harper and PureTech Health. Harper, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer, brought over two decades of experience from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he specialized in translating biotechnology concepts into real-world systems for applications like biodefense and health monitoring. His background in biochemistry and research into neurodegenerative diseases at MIT and Harvard Medical School informed the company's foundational premise. The company is led by CEO David Liu, a seasoned executive with a history of scaling technology companies in digital health, education, and consumer internet, including leadership roles at Quartet, Knewton, and AOL.

The core of Sonde Health's business is a vocal biomarker platform that analyzes subtle, non-linguistic changes in the human voice to detect and monitor signs of various health conditions. The technology processes short voice samples—typically 6 to 30 seconds—to identify thousands of acoustic features that can indicate the risk of mental, respiratory, and cognitive conditions. Sonde's platform has been trained on a substantial and diverse dataset, comprising over 1.2 million voice samples from more than 85,000 individuals across four continents. The company's products include 'Sonde Mental Fitness' for tracking conditions like depression and anxiety, 'Sonde Respiratory Fitness' for issues such as asthma and COPD, and the more recently introduced 'Sonde Cognitive Fitness' for monitoring cognitive effort. It is important to note that these tools are designed for health monitoring and risk assessment, not as formal diagnostic devices, a position that currently obviates the need for FDA approval.

Sonde Health's business model is primarily B2B, licensing its technology through an API and SDK for integration into third-party applications and devices. Its clients span multiple verticals including telehealth, pharmaceuticals, remote patient monitoring, and consumer and medical device manufacturers. The company generates revenue by providing this platform to enterprise customers, enabling them to incorporate voice-based health monitoring into their own services. Strategic partnerships are key to its growth, with collaborations established with companies like KT Corporation for expansion in Asia, GN Group for research into mild cognitive impairment, and Qualcomm to embed its technology directly onto device chipsets for passive monitoring. Sonde has also secured a contract with the U.S. Department of the Air Force to adapt its mental fitness technology for military personnel. The company has successfully raised $35.2 million over two funding rounds, including a $19.2M Series B in December 2022, with investors such as Partners Investment, M Ventures, and NEOM.

Keywords: vocal biomarkers, voice analysis, health monitoring, digital health, preventative healthcare, API for health, mental fitness, respiratory monitoring, cognitive fitness, remote patient monitoring, health technology, AI in healthcare, machine learning, symptom detection, digital biomarkers, telehealth technology, passive health tracking, voice-based AI, health data, non-invasive monitoring