The University of Arizona is joining a multi-site clinical study to evaluate Aiberry's artificial intelligence (AI) powered platform designed to analyze a patient's words, voice, and facial expressions to quickly detect signs of mental health challenges such as depression.
People exhibit clues about their state of mind in the way they talk, the words they use, and the facial expressions they make. Aiberry's AI platform observes these signals objectively and weaves them together to offer evidence-based insights about a person's state-of-mind.
Aiberry's platform takes a video of an everyday conversation and analyzes multiple data streams — visual (facial expressions), audio (tone), and speech (content). These data streams are analyzed separately and in combination to identify patterns specific to a particular mental health disorder. The platform then assigns a score to predict the severity of a specific mental health disorder.
"Arizona is experiencing a mental health crisis. Some studies have shown we're 10th out all U.S. states for the highest rates of depression and 50th in providing access to mental health services, with a client to provider ratio of 600:1," said Dr. Allison J. Huff, DHEd, Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine. "While these numbers are bleak, we have a lot of professionals and researchers on the ground working to improve those statistics. That's why this study, in particular, is so important. Any time we can develop a technology that increases the accuracy and frequency of screening for and managing a mental health disorder, we improve the ability to engage people early and provide treatment options before it becomes a psychiatric emergency."
The clinical trial aims to train and validate aiberry platform's ability to detect depression in a diverse patient population. Participants in the study will complete depression screenings as well as record a brief video interview. Researchers plan to enroll 1,000 participants ages 13 to 79 across the entire multi-site study.
"Aiberry believes in the profound impact AI can have in mental healthcare and also recognizes the tremendous responsibility it brings," said Sangit Rawlley, Aiberry's Co-Founder and Head of Strategy and Marketing. "We strongly believe in leveraging AI to develop mental health screening tools that are highly efficacious and work for all segments of the community while maintaining the highest level of patient privacy. Our partnership with the University of Arizona will allow us to further train and test our solution for a diverse demographic."
Aiberry's patent-pending technology is the result of more than a decade of research by Dr. Newton Howard, Aiberry's Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, and his collaborators. Dr. Howard is one of today's foremost experts in computational and cognitive neurosciences.
Source: https://www.arizona.edu/