Modality.AI, Inc., a San Francisco digital health startup that has developed a conversational AI system remotely assessing neurological disorders using speech and facial gestures, announced today the acquisition of Grey Matter Technologies (GMT), whose NLP technology interprets patient-reported symptoms of neurological diseases.

GMT, a startup based in Florida and Toronto, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Modality. The integration of GMT’s technology into Modality’s award-winning platform will significantly expand its capabilities for more accurately and comprehensively assessing neurological and psychiatric disorders.

GMT was founded by Ira Shoulson, MD, a leader in clinical research and founder of both the Parkinson Study Group and the Huntington Study Group. He started GMT to help make patients heard and with his team has developed the PROP™, the clinically validated Patient Report of Problems™ that analyses verbatim descriptions of the problems patients face, including their functioning, priorities, and symptoms. The PROP is based on a proprietary combination of state-of-the-art NLP, disease-specific ontologies, and expert curation for application to the care and research of patients affected by Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. Dr. Shoulson, current professor at the University of Rochester, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and a Member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, with over 350 scientific publications to his name, will become Chief Medical Officer of Modality.

Ira Shoulson noted “Integrating GMT’s methods for classifying and enumerating what patients say in their own words with Modality’s multimodal and conversational technology creates a clinically validated and powerful platform for improving care as well as clinical and pharmaceutical research.”

GMT has partnered with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research administering PROP open-ended questionnaires to more than 45,000 people with Parkinson’s disease and control volunteers. Among GMT’s customers are several biopharma companies well-known for their neurological programs.

Modality’s founder and CEO David Suendermann-Oeft said “GMT’s unique technology and data models to analyze patient language has enormous benefits for researchers, clinicians, and patients alike in both clinical trial and clinical care settings. Combined with the powerful Modality platform that analyzes speech, facial expressions, limb movements, and cognitive function of patients in interviews with our virtual agent Tina, we are able to comprehensively assess the various aspects of their condition - making patients heard.”

Modality.AI, Inc., was founded in 2018 by CEO David Suendermann-Oeft, PhD, and CTO David Pautler, PhD, experts in AI and signal processing. Modality has pioneered technology for assessing neurological and psychiatric conditions remotely or in clinical settings. The Modality platform uses AI-powered audio and visual measurements of patient conversations with the assistance of Tina, the Modality virtual agent.

From Parkinson’s disease to schizophrenia and depression, Modality's multimodal platform, listed with the FDA as a Class II medical device, is being used by leading clinical institutions globally to diagnose, monitor, and expedite the care and treatment of patients. Most recently, MedCity awarded Modality, which is backed by international venture capital funds and the NIH, first prize in their pharma tech pitch contest and likened Modality’s virtual assistant Tina to “Alexa of Clinical Trials.”

Reference Links

Grey Matter Technologies: https://www.greymattertech.org

Modality.AI: https://modality.ai

David Suendermann-Oeft:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/oeft

http://oeft.com

Ira Shoulson:

https://www.michaeljfox.org/researcher/ira-shoulson-md

https://huntingtonstudygroup.org/hd-insights/meet-the-founder

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Ira-Shoulson-38827904

Contacts

For further information, please contact:

David Fox

Chief Business Officer

Modality.AI

David.Fox@modality.ai