Can a baby’s cry identify neurological disorders? Ubenwa says ‘yes’ – TechCrunch
Summary
When Charles Onus cousin was born with birth asphyxia and later developed a hearing condition, the seed for Ubenwa, an audio biometric company geared at identifying neurological disorders in infants, was also planted.Onu, CEO and co-founder, said he hopes Ubenwa will change the way physicians provide care to infants.Were trying to bring the world to a point where infant cries are considered to be a vital sign just as much as we would consider their heart rate to be a vital sign, he explained in an interview with TechCrunch.After Onu graduated with his undergrad in engineering he volunteered with health-based NGOs and saw more cases like his cousins though some were far grimmer.The Montreal-based company uses an infants cry to determine if it falls within the range of having signs of a neurological condition. According to Onu, the company is hoping to evolve the technology to identify congenital heart disease.It should be noted that a recent Stanford University study identified that some FDA approved AI medical devices are not adequately evaluated and there are no best practices set for the development of these technologies.But to Ubenwas credit, they are performing studies in pursuit of building out the case for the science behind their tech further still.For those actually using the application, they record the baby crying and then receive weekly summaries of patterns. If there is an abnormality detected, the application notifies the user and provides data to share with doctors.Today, doctors use physical assessment to look at eyelids, look at the skin tone, and so on and so forth, Onu said. With simple cry analysis you can track neurological biomarkers on an ongoing basis, non invasively.Despite the company being based out of Canada, they have additional operations in Nigeria (where Onu is originally from) and Brazil. Similarly, Ellipsis Health claims to use voice biomarkers to diagnose depression in patients.To date, Ubenwa has raised $2.5 million USD ($3.2 million Canadian) in a pre-seed round led by Radical Ventures with participation from AIX Ventures, Yoshua Bengio, Google Brains Hugo Larochelle and Marc Bellemare.Up to now the companys focus has been on developing the technology, but this rounds funds will allow the company to do a beta launch and begin trials.