SMK TO FURTHER EXPAND HEALTHCARE BUSINESS VIA CANARY SPEECH COLLABORATION

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 16 (Bernama) -- SMK Corporation (SMK), a Tokyo-based electronic connector manufacturing company, has entered into a capital and business alliance agreement with Canary Speech Inc, maker of speech analysis software.

In a statement, SMK said the collaboration aimed to further expand its healthcare business by acquiring the exclusive rights in Japan and Asia to commercialise and distribute the speech-based algorithm for analysing brain-related diseases and conditions leveraging Canary Speech technology.

Through this capital and business alliance, the company has strengthened its collaborative relationship with Canary Speech and acquired exclusive rights for commercialisation and distribution in Japan and other Asian countries.

Working together with Canary Speech, SMK plans to localise the analytic algorithm developed in Japan to other Asian countries to expand business as well as for the development of new algorithms by Canary Speech for other diseases and conditions.

SMK and Canary Speech have collaborated with the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in developing the algorithm for analysing mild cognitive impairment (MCI), depressive tendency and fatigue level by using Japanese speech data since March 2022.

SMK plans to proceed proof of concept (PoC) with insurance companies, hospitals, and communication service companies, among others, before launching the service in Japan in the spring of 2024.

Going forward, the company will implement a variety of PoC using smartphone application or application programming interface (API) linkage; and launch service for algorithm analysing MCI, depressive tendency, fatigue level in Japanese.

Canary Speech has simplified how people can monitor their health in a fast, non-invasive, and accurate way, through voice with its patented, revolutionary vocal biomarker technology captures and processes 40 seconds of conversational speech to track the presence and severity of diseases, such as depression and anxiety.

-- BERNAMA