Don Wright joins us this week to talk about Clarigent, and their new product, Clarity. Clarity gives clinicians an important new tool, based on AI technology, to track suicide risk and mental health outcomes.
Don has spent over 30 years in the healthcare and informatics space. Prior to Clarigent Health, he led Assurex Health, which grew to over 500 employees and was acquired in 2016 by Myriad Genetics for $225 million. When Don left Assurex after the transition period, he wanted to continue working in the mental health field, and to build another company that helped people.
Lack of funding and other factors including stigma have caused mental health to lag behind other areas of medical practice when it comes to integrating technology and science. In 2018, he established Clarigent Health with the goal of bringing science to mental health. The core technology builds on foundational research conducted at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center led by Dr. John Pestian and Dr. Tracy Glauser. Don’s co-founder, Bill Haynes had previously worked with Don, John and Tracy during the Assurex days, including Assurex sponsoring some of the research that now constitutes the core technology at Clarigent.
Although Don has worked in and advocated for mental healthcare for a long time, three years ago this purpose became more deeply personal. His son Justin died by suicide just as Clarigent was developing the commercial version of the suicide prevention technology. The memory of Justin’s life has made this suicide prevention work a more personal mission for Don and the entire team.
Darin and Jeff are honored to have Don on The Voice Box, and Cobalt Speech is happy to support Clarigent with speech technology.
The Voice Box
Welcome to The Voice Box, a podcast all about the fascinating world of voice and speech technology! Every week, we bring you in-depth interviews with experts in the field, covering everything from the latest advances in natural language processing to the ethical implications of voice assistants.
Whether you're a developer working on your own voice-powered project, a business trying to elevate your customer experience through conversational AI, Bots or Automated Quality Controls or simply someone who's interested in the future of how we interact with technology, The Voice Box has something for you. Our guests come from a wide range of backgrounds, including academia, industry, and startups, giving you a well-rounded perspective on the state of the field.
In each episode, we delve into the business and technical details of how voice and speech technology works, exploring topics like machine learning, signal processing, natural language understanding and processing and linguistics. But we also go beyond the nuts and bolts to discuss the broader implications of these technologies for society. How will voice assistants change the way we live and work? What are the ethical considerations surrounding their use? How will voice biometrics secure and protect our accounts? We tackle these and other big questions on The Voice Box.
So, join us as we explore the exciting and rapidly evolving world of voice and speech technology. With The Voice Box, you'll stay up to date on the latest developments and gain a deeper understanding of the technologies shaping our future.
The Voice Box is hosted by brothers Jeff and Darin Adams. Jeff has a 30-year history working in speech & language technology. He led R&D teams at Dragon, Nuance, Yap, and Amazon before founding Cobalt Speech & Language. Darin has a 30-year history in television broadcasting and is a consummate interviewer. With Jeff and Darin, you will always be informed and entertained.
The Voice Box is sponsored by Cobalt Speech and Language, a leading provider of voice technology to companies around the world. Drop us a line to explore how we can help you win with voice: [email protected]
Podcast theme music is graciously provided by The Garden Plot. (Spotify)