Sharecare, an Atlanta-based health and wellness engagement platform, has acquired Feingold Technologies, a German firm specializing in the analysis of human behavior, mindsets and emotional states.
Feingold founder and CEO Erik Feingold will join Sharecare as its new chief innovation officer in Sharecare’s Atlanta headquarters. Financial details were not disclosed.
MedCityNews reports that the acquisition gives Sharecare a voice analysis tool that can theoretically increase a patient’s self-awareness of emotions like stress or depression. In the first of two press releases issued yesterday, Sharecare cofounder and CEO Jeff Arnold added that the acquisition supports Sharecare’s overall goal of providing comprehensive health profiles for its customers.
“With more mobile phones on the planet than people, we believe strongly that harnessing the power of the phone is critical to achieving this, and Feingold Technologies’ advanced voice and text analysis, correlated with data from various mobile sensors, introduces a whole new level of possibilities,” he said.
In the short term, the Feingold team will work with Sharecare’s product and technology teams to create mobile products and applications to help individuals optimize their productivity and overall happiness. According to MobiHealth News, an app, developed jointly by both companies, has already launched in closed beta for Android devices.
The app is designed to help people improve their self-awareness of stressful or negative emotions by automatically monitoring spectral data alternations in the user’s voice and identifying fractal patterns. Based on these patterns, the technology can determine the user’s mindset and stress type.
Sharecare confirmed that the app will initially be available through a crowd-sourced, adaptive trial in a cooperative effort supported by the Georgia Institute of Technology. Sharecare cofounder Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon and chief medical correspondent for CNN, will oversee the trials.
“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.”
Atlanta, already known as a hotbed for startups in the fintech, cybersecurity and B2B spaces, has started to see an influx of growth in the field of neuroscience as well: Intellimedix, a neuroscience startup that uses Big Data methods to optimize medical treatments, recently raised $2.3 million from Internet Security Systems cofounder Chris Klaus.
Atlanta was also home to the inaugural demo day for NeuroLaunch, an accelerator program for startups at the intersection of neuroscience and technology.
Photo Credit: Sharecare
