New app lets smartphone users chat their way to better health
ATLANTA — Sharecare, a comprehensive digital health-and-wellness engagement platform, on Thursday announced it is launching an app to help people improve self-awareness, personal relationships, well-being and, ultimately, their overall health by analyzing the spectral-data in the tone of their voice during phone calls. Unveiled at the 2015 Lake Nona Impact Forum presented by Johnson & Johnson, the Android-exclusive Sharecare app initially will be available through a crowd-sourced, adaptive trial overseen by Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent.
“In this new era of positive computing, we want to expand our products and platform to empower people to improve their health every day without disrupting their daily routine, and we’re starting by unlocking the science of voice,” said Jeff Arnold, Sharecare’s chairman and CEO. “We acquired a cutting-edge technology company in qualitative and quantitative voice and text analysis, Feingold Technologies, and developed this new app together to measure stress and, in-real time, improve self-awareness, well-being and happiness. Over the coming months, we are looking forward to going beyond voice, and building on this frictionless approach to health care.”
The Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech will provide expertise in human-computer interaction research to the trial’s protocol and analysis; and Gupta will oversee the clinical validity of the unique adaptive trial as its chief architect. Over the next year, Georgia Tech and Gupta will explore how providing people with real-time feedback on stress, behaviors and relationships analyzed through the tone of their voice will lead them to make positive changes in their lives, transforming stress into happiness. Given the trial’s adaptive design, aggregated insights will be shared, feature enhancements will be made to the app, and additional partners and populations will be enrolled throughout the duration of the trial. The overall findings from the trial will be revealed next February at the 2016 Lake Nona Impact Forum.
“I’ve long been fascinated with the inflection point between neuroscience and well-being, as well as how technology – particularly the smartphone – can fuel human optimization,” Gupta said. “Combine that with the fact I’m a big believer in the power of self-awareness and happiness, and I was immediately drawn to partner with Sharecare on this trial. I’m looking forward to studying how this kind of technology can improve a person’s relationships and well-being in-real time, and potentially alter the course of their health journey.”
Several organizations have agreed to invite select members of their populations to opt-in to the trial, including the Lake Nona community in Orlando, Trinity Health and Univision.
“We want to give Hispanic America access to useful information and tools that will help them make healthy decisions to improve their lives, and our participation in Sharecare’s trial is another example of how seriously we take that commitment,” said Isaac Lee, president of News and Digital for Univision Communications and CEO of Fusion. “U.S. Latinos use smartphones more than any other group in this country, the Sharecare app not only stands to help millions of Hispanics have more productive daily interactions with their co-workers, friends and family, but also be healthier overall - and that’s something we want for everyone in our community.”
The Sharecare app works with users simply talking on their Android phone as usual – while, in the background, the app automatically monitors spectral data alternations in the user’s voice, identifying fractal patterns. Based on these patterns, the technology can determine the user’s mindset and stress type – like worry or irritation. The technology does not listen to, record, store or analyze the actual content of the call; and the user can opt-out at any time.
Following each call, the app presents the user with a visual representation of the intensity and stress type detected during their call, ranging from a calm “green” to a very intense “red” and several shades in between; as well as a short description of their mindset during the call. Additionally, within the Sharecare app, users can access a dashboard showing how their results fare over time, per call and contact. By providing real-time feedback on an individual’s stress, as well as monitoring trends over time, the Sharecare app will increase self-awareness, triggering positive behavior change and helping to improve personal relationships, which will actually improve health.
As part of the launch of the Sharecare app and corresponding trial, and Sharecare’s acquisition of Feingold Technologies, Erik Feingold, the company’s CEO, is joining Sharecare as chief innovation officer; and Feingold Technologies’ offices in Munich and Berlin will operate under Sharecare effective immediately.