Medable partners with Aural Analytics on NIH’s Cancer Moonshot program

Medable, a cloud platform company for patient-centered drug development, is partnering with Aural Analytics, a speech neuroscience organization, in its federally funded project to evaluate remote data capture and digital biomarkers in cancer patients. Medable will use Aural Analytics’ clinical-grade speech collection and analytics tools, together with other remote data capture options, to monitor cancer patients’ health via Medable’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for decentralized trials.

In 2018, Medable was given project funding through the National Institute of Health (NIH)’s Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot program. Cancer Moonshot debuted five years ago, instilling an additional $1.8 billion into cancer research through the 21st Century Cures Act passed by Congress. Currently, 240 research projects across more than 70 initiatives have been supported by Moonshot funding, with more expected to come for this seven-year program.

The title of Medable’s study is Digital Biomarkers for Care, and it is intended to test and develop remote data capture, analysis and integration tools in order to assess patients that are enduring cancer treatment. Specifically, the platform will be able to use Aural Analytics’ capabilities by capturing data via patients’ iPhones, keeping track of both physical and physiological parameters as they relate to a patient’s level of fatigue and physical capabilities.

Essentially, the Aural Analytics collaboration brings speech and language-based information about motor, cognitive and respiratory functions into the mix.