News
Medcity calls Modality's virtual agent Tina "...the Alexa of clinical trials"
May 18, 2022
Modality.AI CEO David Suendermann-Oeft recently presented at the Medcity INVEST Conference in Chicago, earning a co-winner acknowledgement in the pharmatech category. Now Medcity News goes deeper into our story in this article.
“Suendermann-Oeft emphasized that Modality is not trying to replace clinicians. Diagnosis and treatment decisions are still up to doctors. But Tina helps inform those decisions. The patient’s responses are recorded and catalogued. The technology analyzes how fast and how loud the responses were. Facial movements during those responses are also analyzed. Making these assessments virtual frees clinicians to do other tasks.”
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Modality.ai Presents at the 9th Annual LSX World Congress
May 16, 2022
This week, Modality.AI founder David Suendermann-Oeft will present at the annual LSX World Congress. The event brings together the founders and CEOs of innovative start-ups through to large pharmaceutical companies.
The LSX event represents the breadth and depth of research and technology driving the advances in the industry right now and in the near future. LSX is an industry-leading gathering with partnering at its core, connecting the biotech, healthtech and medtech industry c-suite with the sector’s most active pharma, investors and health technology business development teams, R&D leaders, and key opinion leaders are driving the sector forward. https://www.lsxleaders.com/lsx-world-congress
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Modality.ai Attends Target ALS Annual Meeting
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022. In the US alone some 15,000 ALS patients live with the diagnosis and during their illness they will become progressively paralyzed, losing speech and independence. Finding effective treatments would finally bring new hope to patients and change the future for anyone who faces this disease.
The mission of Target ALS: discovering a world where no one dies of ALS. Every year the organization brings together over 300 attendees, and the gathering has emerged as one of the premiere ALS research meetings. This year our Director of Business Development, William Burke MD attended and had the opportunity to meet with academic and industry scientists, foundations and thought leaders working on effective diagnostics and treatments.
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Modality.ai Presents at the Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2022 Annual Meeting
April 28, 2022
The Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) is an academic group committed to the development of mind and brain research investigating the psychological, computational, and neuroscientific bases of cognition. Its annual meeting brings together leaders in the field from around the world to share research results and encourage collaboration among peers.
This year, CNS 2022 was held in San Francisco and our Director of Business Development, William Burke presented early pilot study results of a newly created Modality Cognitive Battery. A significant amount of audio/visual data has been collected through Modality’s platform and it is showing utility in many neurological and psychiatric diseases, including ALS, Parkinson’s disease, and depression.
A pilot study is now testing the feasibility of a new patent pending remote “Cognitive Battery” in patients with cognitive impairment, with the goal of being able to distinguish between patients with and without cognitive impairment, or to help assess the level of impairment. All patients were able to complete the study, an encouraging sign that the cognitive load of using the system is lower than the cognitive load being tested with the battery. Modality is now working to make the study available to a larger group of participants and we look forward to presenting further results later this year.
William Burke M.D., Director of Business Development
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A Modality Milestone:
SOPs, QMS & FDA Listing
April 18, 2022
The Modality platform is now listed with the FDA as Class II SaMD (Software as a Medical Device).
Key to achieving this milestone was the implementation of a Quality Management System (QMS) in compliance with FDA Title 21 CFR Part 820 and ISO 13485 standards. This required the development of over thirty Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), followed by implementation and training involving our entire team.
To date Modality has been used in academic research and clinical trials; now with Class II listing, the Modality platform may be purchased for use in health care to analyze speech, facial gestures, and hand movements, providing clinicians a new way to assess neurological and psychiatric disorders.
We thank the team at Enzyme (our QMS vendor and regulatory consultants) for their guidance over the past many months.
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Project Medtech podcast with Modality CEO
March 29, 2022
How does a medtech startup start?
In this wide-ranging interview, “Mister MedTech” Giovanni Lauricella talks with Modality.AI Founder and CEO, David Suendermann-Oeft about his transition from academia to startup CEO, the problem Modality is solving, raising capital as software as a medical device, the type of investors who have supported the company, and more.
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Conferences
March 10, 2022
With conference season in full swing this month you’ll find our CEO David Suendermann-Oeft at:
LSI (Life Science Intelligence) Emerging Medtech Summit March 15 - 18, 2022 (Dana Point, CA)
MedCity's INVEST March 28 - 30, 2022 (Chicago, IL); presenting
RESI (Redefining Early Stage Investments) Digital RESI, June 7 - 9, 2022 (virtual)
Meanwhile, our Research team is working on multiple papers for these important upcoming conferences:
Let us know if you’re attending any of these events and we’ll be happy to meet up!
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Modality.AI Supports Biomarker Discovery
Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Joins EverythingALS Consortium to Help Accelerate Biomarker Discover for Neurological Diseases
February 28, 2022
Today, EverythingALS.org (EALS), a patient-centric, citizen-based California nonprofit accelerating the discovery of digital biomarkers for neurological diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), announced that Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Holdings America, Inc. (MTHA) has joined its consortium to promote accelerated development of digital biomarkers for neurological diseases.
EverythingALS was founded in 2020 with the mission of bringing technological innovations and data science to support efforts -- from care to cure -- for people with ALS.
In 2021, the nonprofit teamed up with Modality.ai, which has developed artificial intelligence (AI) technology to remotely spot biomarkers and assess the progression of ALS through speech and facial gestures using a virtual agent, or avatar. In less than a year, EALS enlisted a team of volunteers to recruit more than 700 participants in its speech study and has produced multiple scientific publications. Continued...
See the article on the announcement on BioSpace.com
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Modality.AI To Present Advances in Digital Biomarkers and Assessments for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders at 2022 Biotech Showcase
January 04, 2022
Modality.AI, developers of self-driven, remotely controlled AI technology analyzing speech, facial gestures, and limb movements for neurological and psychiatric disorders, is pleased to announce that it will be presenting at the Biotech Showcase, to be held January 10 to 19, 2022. Modality Founder and CEO, Dr. David Suendermann-Oeft, will be presenting.
Announcing his company’s progress since launching at last year’s Biotech Showcase, Suendermann-Oeft said, “This past year, 2021, has been pivotal for the positive results from studies using our patient monitoring platform.
“In particular,” he added, “findings regarding digital biomarkers and progression metrics for ALS, Parkinson’s, and autism spectrum disorder – all based on Modality’s sophisticated AI software for tracking and analyzing speech and facial gestures as well as limb movements – were published and presented at several major scientific conferences, including Interspeech 2021 (the world’s largest speech science and technology conference), the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, and the National Autism Conference.”
Without the need for software installation or hardware purchase, Modality's self-driven conversational AI platform can accurately, frequently, and objectively analyze and track patients’ data through facial and speech patterns. Modality's system frees up physicians' time by administering asynchronous tests, while collecting accurate data for the physician to use, reducing the need for manual annotation.
Modality takes an inclusive approach to neurological and mental health disorders. The company’s team and SaaS technology builds on many years of peer-reviewed external and in-house research showing that conditions ranging from autism to depression, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, ALS, and stroke can be accurately measured by applying Modality’s novel self-driven, conversational AI platform analyzing speech, facial gestures, and limb movements. Modality is well positioned to make a distinct and complementary contribution to the realms of remote health monitoring, clinical trial participant screening, early disease detection, monitoring and treatment response.
About Biotech Showcase
Biotech Showcase, produced by Demy-Colton and EBD Group, is an investor conference focused on driving advances in therapeutic development by providing a sophisticated networking platform for executives and investors that fosters investment and partnership opportunities. The conference takes place each year during the course of one of the industry’s largest gatherings and busiest weeks.
For interviews with Modality’s CEO and further information, contact David Fox at david.fox@modality.ai
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Bay Area Nonprofit Seeks 300 Volunteers in ALS Speech Study
November 21, 2021
EverythingALS, a partner with Modality.ai in providing self-driven neurological assessments, is seeking 300 volunteers to participate in a Speech Study to help end ALS.
Bay Area Nonprofit Seeks 300 Volunteers in ALS Speech Study - CBS San Francisco
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Modality.AI podcast by CEO David Suendermann-Oeft
November 1, 2021
Episode #11: Audiovisual Assessments for ALS
Modality.AI is paving the way for more efficient, effective, less costly clinical trials.
This interview takes you through the company’s journey: only six months after kick-off of the large-scale data collection with EverythingALS, the Modality team of PhDs and neurologists at MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, and other academic institutions published a paper showing strong signals of biomarkers for ALS.
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2021 Biofuture Conference
October 5, 2021
Modality Founder & CEO David Suendermann-Oeft spoke on "Next Wave Diagnostics: AI and Health Innovations Accelerate" at the 2021 Biofuture Conference in New York City.
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Speech Study Using AI Technology to Spot ALS Biomarkers
September 10, 2021
The technology, developed by Modality.ai, is a web-based computer program that uses audio (speech) and video (facial) recordings to assess neurological states automatically through AI and machine learning algorithms.
Its greatest advantage is that data can be collected remotely at home on any computer device with the help of a virtual assistant called "Tina." This is important for people with ALS, who often have limited mobility due to muscle weakness, which may affect their ability to participate in clinical studies.
Read more in the ALS News Today article
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Investors Champion Modality.AI Technology That ‘Self-Drives’ Neurological and Psychiatric Assessments
August 31, 2021
Modality.AI, pioneering AI technology for assessing neurological and psychiatric conditions remotely and in clinical settings through speech and facial measurements, has received a $2.1 million seed round led by the Relentless Venture Fund (“Relentless”), with major funding from Novalis Biotech Acceleration (“Novalis”), alongside several other funds and private investors.
Read more in the press release
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Relentless Pursuit Venture Fund adds Modality.AI to its portfolio
August 19, 2021
Brenda Irwin, Managing General Partner at Relentless Venture Fund, writes in a LinkedIn post, "Thrilling new addition to the Relentless Venture Fund portfolio just announced."
Read more from the Relentless Partners press release
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Modality.AI integrated in APST's ALS app
June 15, 2021
Modality.AI, developers of multimodal remote patient monitoring solutions for neurologic conditions, is pleased to announce a partnership with APST (Ambulanzpartner Soziotechnologie GmbH).
Commenting on the launch, CEO and Founder David Suendermann-Oeft said: “2020 was a pivotal year for diagnostic and remote patient monitoring solutions. Without the need for software installation or hardware purchase, Modality's conversational AI system can accurately, frequently, and objectively analyze and track patients’ data through facial and speech patterns. Modality's system frees up physicians' time by administering asynchronous tests, while collecting accurate data for the physician to use, reducing the need for manual annotation.”
The ALS App is currently available to German language speakers facilitating the capturing of the ALS Functional Rating Scale-revised (ALS-FRS) on smartphones, iPhones and tablets. Further information can be found here.
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Human Behavior Club HEALTHTECH chat
April 16, 2021
David Fox, Chief Business Officer and David Suendermann-Oeft, CEO and Founder of Modality.AI, will speak at the Human Behavior Club
the largest club on Clubhouse w/ 25k members and 400k followers
live on Friday, April 16, 12 noon PT
organized by Charm Health
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Healthtech Award Winner: The Story of Modality.AI
March 29, 2021
HealthTech Networking Club member and winner of the HealthTech Startup Award in January, David Suendermann-Oeft, CEO and Founder of Modality.AI, spoke with the bene : studio team about what inspired him to start the company, their biggest achievements so far, and advice for startup leaders in the digital health space.
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Modality.AI presentations this month
March 2021
It has been a busy month here at Modality. Last week, we were one of the youngest companies to present at the Landmark Health Innovations Forum 2021 sponsored by MorganStanley and NIH.
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Modality.AI also presented at Life Science Nation's Innovator's Pitch Challenge RESI Conference Investor's Pitch Challenge, in March, 2021.
It has just been announced that Modality.AI was awarded Second Place in the Investor's Pitch Challenge. We are thrilled that the #RESI community thinks so highly of our groundbreaking technology and accomplishments! Thank you for the opportunity to present at the event. We look forward to future #RESI and @LSciNation conferences.
https://twitter.com/LSciNation/status/1374449472546074624?s=20
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And Modality.AI was selected to present at the Startup Springboard in partnership with BIO-Europe Spring, Europe's largest springtime digital partnering event, March 22-25, 2021.
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Modality.AI presents paper at April 2021 American Academy of Neurology Meeting
February 2021
We are pleased to announce that our work titled "Towards a large-scale audio-visual corpus for research on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis" in collaboration with @everything_als, @MITdeptofBE, @harvardbrainsci and @IBMResearch will be presented at this year's virtual #AANAM .
https://www.aan.com/conferences-community/annual-meeting/
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Modality.AI wins Healthcare Startup Award
January 2021
"Modality.AI was chosen as the winner of the monthly HealthTech Startup Award after pitching alongside 4 other startups in January 2021.
The session was moderated by Sandra Miller (Runway Innovation Hub). Judges Roger Kuo (GoingVC), Dr. Orrin Ailloni-Charas (Global Health Impact Fund), Dr. Gary Goldman (GHIF), Michael Koutsoudakis (Paulson Investment Company), and Balint Bene (bene : studio) awarded this month’s prestigious title."
https://benestudio.co/healthtech-startup-award-january-2021-modality/
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Modality.AI presents at 2021 Biotech Showcase
January 5, 2021
Modality.AI, developers of multimodal remote patient monitoring solutions for neurologic conditions, presented at the Seed Showcase, part of the Biotech Showcase, held between January 11-14 2021. Prof. Dr. David Suendermann-Oeft, Founder and CEO presented. Please contact David Fox david.fox@modality.ai or search “Modality.AI” in the partneringONE platform to book a meeting.
Commenting on the event, Suendermann-Oeft said: “2020 has been a pivotal year for diagnostic and remote patient monitoring solutions. Without the need for software installation or hardware purchase, Modality's conversational AI system can accurately, frequently, and objectively analyze and track patients’ data through facial and speech patterns. Modality's system frees up physicians' time by administering asynchronous tests, while collecting accurate data for the physician to use, reducing the need for manual annotation.”
Biotech Showcase, produced by Demy-Colton and EBD Group, is an investor conference focused on driving advances in therapeutic development by providing a sophisticated networking platform for executives and investors that fosters investment and partnership opportunities. The conference takes place each year during the course of one of the industry’s largest gatherings and busiest weeks.
“We were delighted to see Modality.AI raise funding at the 2020 Seed Showcase,” said Lila Taylor, CBO of Demy-Colton. “We created the Seed Showcase to bring early-stage life science entrepreneurs and investors together to accelerate the development of innovative technologies that will drive the future of drug discovery.”
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Artificial intelligence taking role in developing technology to help Parkinson’s patients during COVID-19 pandemic
November 24, 2020
Jessica Huber, a professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences and associate dean for research in Purdue’s College of Health and Human Sciences, leads Purdue’s Motor Speech Lab. Huber and her team are now doing virtual studies to evaluate speech disorders related to Parkinson’s using artificial intelligence technology platforms.
Huber and her team have been working to develop telepractice tools for the assessment and treatment of speech impairments like Parkinson’s disease. They received a National Institutes of Health small business innovation and research grant to develop a telehealth platform to facilitate the provision of speech treatment with the SpeechVive device, which has received attention at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
In the current study, Huber and her team are collaborating with a startup company, Modality AI, which developed the AI platform that will be used in the study.
“The application of the technology we are evaluating may lead to far-reaching insights into more standardization in assessments, earlier diagnoses and possibly an easier way to track discrete changes over time to guide interventions,” said Andrew Exner, a graduate research assistant in the Motor Speech Lab. “My personal research passion, and the mission of our lab, is to find ways to improve the quality of life for people with Parkinson’s and other related diseases.”
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Modality Names Tom Sellig to Board of Advisors
April 8, 2020
Modality, a pioneer in AI-backed healthcare screening solutions, announced that it has named Tom Sellig to its Board of Advisors. Mr. Sellig is Chief Executive Office of LabConnect, a leading global provider of central laboratory and support services for biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, medical device, and contract research organizations. He also sits on its Board of Directors.
“We are pleased to welcome Tom to Modality,” said David Suendermann-Oeft, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of Modality. “His experience in the clinical research space, as well as broader medical technology landscape, will be a tremendous value in helping us optimize how data is collected and used in the research and treatment development process.”
Added Mr. Sellig, ”What Modality is doing with facial and voice recognition data in its AI-powered screens to improve research outcomes is vitally important and highly needed. The cleaner the data, the more accurate the results – and I am excited to join David and his team in delivering that to a wide range of opportunities in digital health today.”
Prior to joining LabConnect, Mr. Sellig served as Chief Commercial Officer at ConnectiveRx and from 2014 to 2018, he was Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Patheon, which was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2017. From 2007 to 2014, he held a variety of roles of increasing responsibility within global contract research organization and drug development services company Covance. Before Covance, he had executive leadership roles at Ventana Clinical (now part of Syneos) and Medical Broadcasting Company. He earned his bachelor's degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from New York University.
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Modality Names Four to Board of Advisors
January 22, 2020
Modality named four leading professionals in the medical and healthcare industries to its board of advisors:
Dr. Jordan Green, Matina Souretis Horner Professor in Rehabilitation Sciences and Director of Speech and Feeding Disorder Lab and Associate Provost of Research at the MGH Institute of Health Professions at Harvard University
Dr. Harneet Bath, Vice President of Inpatient Services at VEP Healthcare
Dr. Gloria Lau, CEO and cofounder of Alpha Medical
Dr. Irfan Qureshi, Vice President at Biohaven Pharmaceuticals
“Modality is delighted to have such a distinguished group of professionals join our advisory board. Their collective expertise will synergistically help Modality’s automatic speech and facial analytics capabilities to expedite drug trials, reduce the failure rate of trials, and increase the profitability of drugs,” said Dr. David Suendermann-Oeft, CEO and co-founder of Modality. “Their commitment to Modality further confirms the value that we provide to the clinical research space and to the pharmaceutical industry.”
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Modality is featured as one of the five conversational AI companies in the Tooploox AI Trend Report
January, 2020
www.tooploox.com/ai-trend-report-2020/files/AI_Trend_Report_2020_Tooploox.pdf
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Modality.AI's first VC visits the office
January 22, 2020
Voxel Ventures, a Digital Health fund from Frankfurt, Germany, and the first VC to invest in Modality, visited us January 22, 2020 at the San Francisco Office.
Voxel Ventures' Julian Wichmann, Startup Investor & Advisor and Radiologist, MD, said,
"Great meeting yesterday here in San Francisco with the Modality.AI team (a Voxel Ventures portfolio company).
So their fully functional software platform is able to analyze your voice and facial movement in real time, allowing for clinical assessment from home! I tried it out myself and was impressed by the flawless and smooth integration - all you need is a web browser, camera, and internet access (=mobile friendly)! Their #artificialintelligence software is already being tested in clinical trials at a major university hospitals, in which patients with severe neurological diseases can be evaluated at their own pace from home with much more and better data being generated - at a fraction of the cost! Obviously the use cases and business cases for such a system in the future are endless!
True innovation that really helps patients and advances the field is unfortunately hard to find in my opinion when you‘re in #digitalhealth or #healthcare #venturecapital and most #startups often only have an idea for a product. Modality.AI and its brilliant team stood out to me from the beginning and I‘m very excited about their progress and big news in 2020!"
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Modality Announces UCSF Partnership
September 20, 2019
Modality announced its partnership with the University of California, San Francisco’s Weill Institute of Neurosciences at the Alchemist Accelerator’s demo day in Menlo Park on September 20, 2019. Under the terms of the partnership, UCSF researchers are using Modality to help streamline their research process and optimize data collection and analysis.
“We just started using Modality to collect our data, and we can already see it saving us a great deal of time while collecting accurate information,” said Dr. Carly Demopoulos, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Institute. “Our research has become vastly more efficient and I’ve already started planning future studies that are made feasible by Modality.”
View a video from Demo Day. [https://vimeo.com/362379517]
Dr. Dempoulos and her team study autism spectrum disorder, particularly characterizing the pathology’s underlying symptoms in order to develop targeted therapies. Autism affects more than 60 million people globally.
Traditionally in research, patients and their caregivers need to go to the lab for interviews, from which speech behaviors are manually recorded, analyzed, and categorized. This has historically been a very cumbersome and labor-intensive process.
“The underlying process to develop drugs and therapies are extremely inefficient,” said David Suendermann-Oeft, CEO and co-founder of Modality. Presently, drug trials take on average six years to complete, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with 80% failing to secure FDA approval and a spend of roughly $70 billion a year.
“Modality has created a solution,” Dr. Suendermann-Oeft said. “We have created a neurological test that is based on the principle that engages the patient with an avatar in a conversation using the same protocols that the neurologist is using. We are extracting facial movements and speech patterns and producing in real time accurate metrics that are predictive of the clinical outcome.”
As a result, Modality can help close the trials four months earlier, reduce the failure rate by 15%, and increase return on investment in a drug’s investment by 80%.
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