BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sonde Health Inc., a company developing a voice-based technology platform for monitoring and diagnosing mental and physical medical conditions, today announced the completion of a $16 million Series A financing round, including the issuance of $6 million in shares upon conversion of debt into equity. The round was led by M Ventures (the corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany), with participation from MP Healthcare Venture Management, Inc. (the corporate venture capital arm of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation), Neoteny 4, LP, Canepa Healthcare, and founder PureTech Health. Sonde intends to use the proceeds from the financing to expand its capability across multiple health conditions and device types and to fund commercialization activities.
“At M Ventures we back exceptional science and technology entrepreneurs to bring potentially disruptive ideas to reality,” said Edward Kliphuis, investment director of new businesses at M Ventures. “Sonde’s best-in-class vocal biomarker technology, driven by a great founder team, is such a transformational idea, which has the potential to positively impact patient outcomes by fundamentally reimagining how mental and physical conditions are currently monitored and managed.”
Sonde’s proprietary technology is designed to enable a range of consumer devices, such as smartphones and smart speakers, to provide disease screening and management solutions based on acoustic analysis of seconds of voice. Sonde is working to create seamless universal access to accurate and timely health information, which has the potential to promote wellness and improve the timing and selection of a range of therapeutic interventions. This approach may enable the prevention and treatment of conditions ranging from depression and respiratory diseases to chronic diseases of aging.
“One of the oldest tools in our health care arsenal, the thermometer, is arguably still one of the most valuable because of its simplicity and widespread availability outside the clinical setting. Our longstanding vision has been to harness the health information present in billions of daily voice interactions to create a 21st century thermometer, or ‘vocometer’, that provides broad digital healthcare decision support needed to enable new models of precision and preventative medicine,” said Jim Harper, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sonde Health. “This financing round and the support of our new long-term partners allows us to accelerate the development of this groundbreaking technology and help deliver the positive impact it can have on an individual’s health and the healthcare system.”
About M Ventures
M Ventures is the strategic, corporate
venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Its mandate is to
invest in innovative technologies and products with the potential to
significantly impact the company’s core business areas. From its
headquarters in Amsterdam and offices in the US and Israel, M Ventures
invests globally in transformational ideas driven by great
entrepreneurs. M Ventures takes an active role in its portfolio
companies and teams up with entrepreneurs and co-investors to translate
innovation towards commercial success. M Ventures has a significant
focus on early stage investing and company creation including the
creation of spin-offs to leverage the company’s science and technology
base. For more information, visit www.m-ventures.com.
About Sonde Health
Co-founded by PureTech
Health (LSE: PRTC), Sonde
Health is developing a voice-based technology platform to monitor
and diagnose psychological and physical medical conditions. Sonde’s
proprietary technology works by sensing and analyzing subtle changes in
the voice to create a range of persistent brain, muscle, and respiratory
health measurements that provide a more complete picture of health in
just seconds. To date, Sonde has collected voice and health data from
over 10,000 subjects as part of the ongoing validation of its platform.
These research and development data and activities are being accelerated
to expand its proprietary technology into neurological, respiratory, and
cardiovascular diseases as well as other health and wellness conditions.
Sonde’s vocal biomarker program has demonstrated the potential to
effectively screen and monitor for disease using information obtained
from an individual’s voice on commonly-owned devices and it has the
potential to fundamentally change the way mental and physical health is
monitored and diagnosed.
