Sonde Launches Voice Health Screening for COVID-19

8 July 2020

 PureTech Health plc

PureTech Founded Entity Sonde Health Launches New Voice-Enabled Health Screening Tool to Potentially Help Employers Return to Work During the Global Pandemic

Sonde One combines 6-second voice analysis, CDC-informed COVID-19 questionnaire and body temperature reading in one app

PureTech Health plc (LSE: PRTC) ("PureTech" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercialising highly differentiated medicines for devastating diseases, is pleased to note that its Founded Entity, Sonde Health, has launched Sonde One, a new voice-enabled health detection and monitoring app to potentially help employers improve employee safety, meet government mandates and satisfy their own administrative needs as they reopen office doors in a rapidly changing COVID-19 environment. 

The announcement from Sonde Health is below:

Sonde Health Launches New Voice-Enabled Health Screening Tool to Help Employers Return to Work During the Global Pandemic

Sonde One combines 6-second voice analysis, COVID-19 questionnaire, and body temperature reading in one app

BOSTON-July 8, 2020-As businesses across the country grapple with how to safely bring employees back to the physical workplace, a new voice-enabled health detection and monitoring app from Sonde Health promises to potentially help employers improve employee safety, meet government mandates, and satisfy their own administrative needs as they reopen office doors in a rapidly changing COVID-19 environment.

The new tool, called Sonde One, leverages the company's advanced vocal biomarker platform and machine learning technology. With a single 6-second voice sample, the app is designed to quickly and objectively detect respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, shortness of breath, or chest tightness or pain. The app combines this voice analysis with a comprehensive, CDC-informed COVID-19 questionnaire and user inputted body temperature to give employees clear instructions about where they can work within one minute. Employers can deploy the solution to any number of staff anywhere and make daily informed decisions regarding who can go into the workplace or who should work from home, without requiring new equipment or workflows.

"At Sonde, we believe that voice is a vital sign and a meaningful predictor of health," said David Liu, Chief Executive Officer for Sonde Health. "By analysing a few seconds of speech, we can detect subtle changes in a person's voice caused by common symptoms of respiratory disease. We built this capability into the Sonde One app so organisations can provide their employees with simple and fast COVID-19 monitoring in their pocket."

To bring Sonde One to market, Sonde has partnered with corporate wellness solutions provider Wellworks for You to make the tool available to its clients and their 1.4 million participating members. SHI International, a 5,000-person global provider of technology products and services, is the first enterprise to enrol. The company will begin implementing the Sonde One app in August, as it gradually begins bringing employees back to the workplace, starting with its Somerset, NJ headquarters.

"After months of remote work and distributed workforces, many employers want to get their employees back in the office; they're just not sure of the best way to do it," says Thomas Tegler, President of Wellworks for You. "At Wellworks for You, we're always seeking better ways to promote employee wellness and preventative care, and in today's healthcare climate, Sonde Health provides a novel solution. Sonde One is an easy, non-invasive way for organisations to manage employee health risks during the pandemic and potentially get workers back to the office safely."

"As we navigate this pandemic, our employees' health and wellness is our top priority," says Michael Haluska, Vice President of Human Resources for SHI International. "From the conference room to the warehouse floor, the Sonde One app will help us standardise our return to work policy to eliminate any confusion and keep all employees feeling safe."

Sonde One can be customised to each employer's return to work policy, giving employees clear guidance on whether they should or should not report for physical duty following each screening. Additionally, a QR code can be delivered to employees within the app and scanned at an organisation's front door to confirm compliance with protocols. Secure and customisable reporting capabilities enable employers to confirm employee participation, satisfy enterprise needs, and adhere to mandatory state guidelines surrounding employee screening and documentation.

Once an employer signs on, employees can download their employer-specific app via the App Store or Google Play on any smartphone, allowing for fast, simple deployment across enterprises.

For more information about Sonde One, visit https://www.sondehealth.com/app-page.

About Sonde Health

Leveraging 300,000 voice samples from over 50,000 individuals, Sonde Health's voice-based technology platform is designed to detect health conditions and symptoms from changes in voice. In seconds, Sonde's proprietary technology senses and analyses subtle changes in the voice due to changes in a person's physiology to create a range of measurements that provide early health detection and monitoring. www.sondehealth.com 

About Wellworks For You

Wellworks For You is a Corporate Wellness and Mental Well-Being Management Company, headquartered in Malvern, PA., focusing on high touch customer service. We provide customised wellness solutions for organisations throughout the world.

Press note - SHI CEO Thai Lee is an investor in Sonde Health.

About PureTech Health

PureTech is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to discovering, developing and commercialising highly differentiated medicines for devastating diseases, including intractable cancers, lymphatic and gastrointestinal diseases, central nervous system disorders and inflammatory and immunological diseases, among others. The Company has created a broad and deep pipeline through the expertise of its experienced research and development team and its extensive network of scientists, clinicians and industry leaders. This pipeline, which is being advanced both internally and through PureTech's Founded Entities, is comprised of 24 products and product candidates, including two that have been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). All of the underlying programmes and platforms that resulted in this pipeline of product candidates were initially identified or discovered and then advanced by the PureTech team through key validation points based on the Company's unique insights into the biology of the brain, immune and gut, or BIG, systems and the interface between those systems, referred to as the BIG Axis.

For more information, visit www.puretechhealth.com or connect with us on Twitter @puretechh.

Forward Looking Statement

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