Voice AI Healthcare Research Startup inVibe Acquired by Clinical Trial Tech Developer Thread
Decentralized clinical research tech developer Thread has acquired healthcare-focused voice AI startup inVibe for an undisclosed sum. Thread plans to augment its medical trials with inVibe’s conversational data collection and analysis, a notable extension of the clinical voice AI healthcare providers are rapidly adopting.
inVibe Thread
inVibe is essentially a healthcare market research firm applying voice AI, machine learning, and related technology to the wider medical field, including pharmaceutical companies, health tech startups, and marketing agencies. Their platform offers insight into what healthcare professionals, their patients, and their patient’s caregivers want and think. Those tools are readily applicable to clinical trials, according to Thread, especially with the growing demand for data and analytics useful to the more complex state of modern research. inVibe’s technology records conversations between researchers and participants in medical studies. The AI then breaks down and analyzes the words, tone, emotion, and other facets of the discussion in real-time. The results will be a part of Thread’s decentralized research platform. The voice AI also serves as a recruitment service for researchers looking for participants in a study or for surveying. Gathering and analyzing real-world patient experience can simultaneously help ensure the researchers are in compliance with rules about including patient feedback in clinical research reports.
“inVibe adds capabilities to the THREAD platform that allow us to integrate the power of voice into clinical research. This will help us as we seek to create the best possible trial experiences for participants and all other study stakeholders,” Thread CEO John Reites said. “The ability to analyze and integrate data from listening technology is currently missing from other top players in the industry. We are moving the needle when it comes to delivering adaptive, patient-centered research experiences,”
Doctor Voice
Collecting and sifting through the conversations between healthcare professionals and patients has become a significant aspect of both the voice tech and healthcare industries over the last year. The acquisitions and funding rounds centered on companies focusing on one or more pertinent elements are a regular occurrence. Most recently, ambient medical voice AI startup DeepScribe raised $30 million. Doctor voice assistant startup Suki raised $55 million last month, while Notable picked up $100 million in November. Specialized medical services are also a part of the trend as the investment dollars picked up by dental voice AI startup Bola and veterinarian-centered Talktoo attest. On the acquisition side, Oracle’s $28.3 billion purchase of health technology developer Cerner overshadows everything else in healthcare voice AI as Oracle explicitly described its plans to expand Cerner’s clinical voice assistants. And while Nuance is currently undergoing a $19.7 billion acquisition by Microsoft, that happened only after acquiring the medical voice AI startup Saykara. To keep up on the research front, Thread wants inVibe to give them the voice AI they lack.
“The inVibe solution supports multiple research phases and stakeholders, keeping patients and health care professionals as our top priority at all times,” inVibe CEO Fabio Gratton said. “Joining THREAD will expedite the delivery of primary research with direct participant listening research via automated survey and voice data capture, and will alter the outcomes of new drugs in the marketplace.”
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