seamlessCARE, an Irish digital health start-up, recently launched Empathic, an app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret the emotions being expressed by non-verbal individuals. The startup is headquartered at NovaUCD, and is a spinout of the University College Dublin School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

The Empathic app supports people who have fewer than 20 functional words, often described as "non-verbal" or "minimally verbal." It is designed for individuals who do not have the intellectual or physical capacity to type or to use other forms of assisted communication technologies, due to an acquired brain injury, learning disability, stroke, autism, dementia or a range of other conditions. 

In most families and care settings, there is one person who understands the non-verbal individual, but it can be difficult for everyone else to know how that person is feeling, according to NovaUCD.

Using the Empathic app, anyone can make a short recording to understand if the non-verbal person is expressing happiness, boredom, frustration or up to 10 emotions. This can help to improve quality of life for the non-verbal person and reduce the challenging behaviors that can result from frustration.

Dr Aviva Cohen, seamlessCARE CEO and co-founder, said, "The inspiration for Empathic came from 14 years of caring for my late husband, Steve. He became non-verbal as the result of a severe stroke.  Over time, I learned to understand him, but it was always difficult for carers, friends and family to know how he was feeling."

The seamlessCARE team has been collecting thousands of vocalizations from non-verbal people to train the artificial intelligence that powers the Empathic app. The AI is built exclusively on recordings from people who cannot use fluent language; in this way it differs from software that detects emotion in general conversation. Learn more at: https://seamlesscare.ie/