Novartis and Merck-backed Koneksa Health has partnered with speech collection and analysis tech firm Aural Analytics to expand its “digital biomarker” offering.
The deal—financial terms of which were not provided—will add speech analysis to Koneksa’s suite of data capture technologies. According to the firms, the goal is to make it easy to add speech measures to Koneksa studies and digital biomarker development programs.
“This new capability is radically different from the old approach. This is an example of a digital biomarker and like all of our biomarkers, these voice measures are objective, more sensitive and easily repeated,” Koneksa CEO Chris Benko told Fierce Biotech. This new offering could “dramatically change how we assess the efficacy of therapies in clinical trials,” he added.
Aural Analytics technologies will be integrated into Koneksa’s SaaS Solution and made available to support clinical studies around the world. The goal is to partner across many different therapeutic areas beyond neurodegenerative diseases, including respiratory and rare diseases, Benko said.
The deal is also in keeping with growing sectorwide demand for remote data capture technologies. Partly, this reflects industry interest in decentralized studies, which has intensified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, increased interest in capture tech also fits with the longer running trend that has seen sponsors and CROs seek to boost recruitment and retention rates by making it easier and more convenient for people to take part in drug research.
Lowering the “patient burden” was a key aim outlined by Koneksa in February when it completed a $45 million series C fundraising round that saw Takeda Ventures join existing backers Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Novartis.
Aural Analytics’ deal with Koneksa comes just under a year after decentralized trial tech firm Medable forged a similar agreement.
That partnership—which was part of the wider U.S. National Institutes of Health-backed “cancer moonshot” project—is focused on using speech collection and analytical tools alongside other digital biomarkers to monitor cancer patients involved in trials.