Aural Analytics, Inc. is a speech analytics company that has been owned by Linus Health, a Boston-based digital health company, since March 2024. It was headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, as of 2019, and the latest Arizona address Arizona AI found is on federal award records from 2021; no source after the March 2024 acquisition confirms an Arizona office or staff [not independently verified]. According to Linus Health, its main product, Speech Vitals, collects samples of speech from patients through app-based tests and evaluates them to assess cognitive conditions. Linus Health says the patented technology behind Speech Vitals has been used to detect neurological conditions such as dementia, autism and ALS, and that the software is used by healthcare systems and life science organizations in pharmaceutical research and clinical trials.
The company's connection to AI is in how it scores speech. In a 2017 National Science Foundation project description, Aural Analytics said it was building machine-learning algorithms that objectively score speech samples along clinically standard perceptual dimensions. The verified sources do not place the company in the semiconductor or electronics supply chain.
Aural Analytics grew out of Arizona State University. The company says its platform technology is based on ASU research by co-founders Julie Liss and Visar Berisha, who were both ASU faculty in 2019, Liss in the College of Health Solutions and Berisha with a joint appointment in the College of Health Solutions and the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Liss and Berisha joined Venture Devils, an ASU program for entrepreneurs, and in 2015 longtime entrepreneur Daniel Jones was assigned as their mentor; by 2019 Jones was the company's co-founder and chief executive officer. The company dates its founding to 2015, although its first National Science Foundation award, an STTR Phase I award, is dated December 2014, to an awardee address in Tempe [not independently verified].
The company was based at SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center. ASU News reported in 2019 that it had moved from a small second-floor office at SkySong to the 1951@SkySong co-working space and then to its own space on the ground floor of Building 4. Federal award records from 2021 list its address as 1355 N Scottsdale Rd, Ste 110, in Scottsdale. In September 2019 the company announced company-wide funding totaling $4.3 million from a series seed round led by Morningside Ventures and Tamarisc Ventures together with National Science Foundation grant funding; Arizona Tech Investors and Desert Angels also took part [not independently verified]. That figure is the company's own and is not described as an Arizona amount. The National Science Foundation obligated $1,424,285 to the company under an SBIR Phase II award across federal fiscal years 2019 to 2021, and in 2021 it obligated $256,000 under an STTR Phase I award for speech-based remote assessment of respiratory function related to COVID-19. ASU News reported in 2019 that the company employed roughly 30 people, including four ASU alumni, three of them former students of Berisha working as software engineers and algorithm developers; the article does not say how many worked in Arizona.
In 2017 a study the founders conducted on Muhammad Ali using the Aural Analytics technology drew media attention when it showed signs of slowed and slurred speech years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The company says it won the 2017 Global SCRIP Award for Best Technology in Clinical Trials. In 2019 its technology was being used in clinical trials through a collaboration with Dr. Jeremy Shefner, chair of neurology at the Barrow Neurological Institute.
The FDA designated Speech Vitals - ALS as a Breakthrough Device, a designation reported in March 2023; a Breakthrough designation speeds FDA review but is not a clearance or approval [not independently verified]. At that time the company was reported to be trying to secure approval of the software under the de novo clearance pathway for medical devices, and Arizona AI found no source confirming that clearance was granted; the latest regulatory item it found is the FDA registration Linus Health listed in March 2024. Linus Health also lists FDA registration of Speech Vitals as a computerized cognitive assessment aid. Speech Vitals-ALS was used in a placebo-controlled trial of Prilenia Therapeutics' drug pridopidine within the HEALEY ALS Platform trial, and Linus Health says the company took part in the EverythingALS early detection study and more than 30 other clinical studies. In 2023 Aural Analytics reported that the technology was available on four continents and worked with eight languages.
On March 11, 2024, Linus Health announced that it had acquired Aural Analytics, a deal that included the company's assets, technology and intellectual property. The verified sources do not show whether any office or staff remains in Arizona after the acquisition, so Arizona AI presents the company's Scottsdale and Tempe history as history. Taken together, the record shows a company whose co-founders were ASU faculty, that was funded in part by federal research grants and a seed round the company announced, and that was bought by an out-of-state digital health company.