Mental health tech firm launches app-based listening tool

Clarigent Health, a mental health technology company, has launched Clairity, an app-based listening tool designed to provide clinical decision support to mental health professionals. The company worked with services firm AWH to develop the app. 

Clairity analyses speech with artificial intelligence (AI) trained to identify patients at risk of suicide. For mental health professionals, whose observations are informed by education, practice, and experience, Clairity is designed to provide an additional objective metric to help identify potential risks.

The Clairity app uses machine learning/AI to analyse the conversation to predict someone who’s contemplating suicide imminently, says Ryan Frederick of AWH.

Clairity identifies vocal biomarkers – non-invasive, objective indicators of mental health states. The vocal biomarkers are tracked over time alongside patient-reported symptoms and clinical impressions. Voice data and clinical impressions are captured by the Clairity app. Standardised patient assessments can be captured in the app or imported securely if they have been captured elsewhere. Clairity returns personalised session summaries, patient-specific treatment progress, and aggregated data to help assess risk across a patient group.

The launch of Clairity comes as clinicians respond to a mental health crisis linked to months of stress, anxiety, and isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The continued need for social distancing has propelled the use of telehealth appointments, which brings new challenges for mental health professionals trained to look for signals in a face-to-face environment. The Clairity product suite is compatible with telehealth platforms, and ready to be used as an additional support tool to detect mental health risk and inform care.

Clarigent founder and CEO Don Wright, said: “We want to help save lives and prevent anyone from falling through the cracks. Clairity provides the right data to the clinician at the right time to support them in making the right care decisions. Clinicians can also share this with their patients, providing views of treatment progress. We believe Clairity can be a catalyst for a shared decision-making care model.”

Established in 2018, Clarigent Health creates HIPAA-compliant solutions building upon AI algorithms and more than a decade of research and data, including recordings of children and adults at multiple clinical sites.