Los Angeles, California Jan 15, 2025 (Issuewire.com) - Deep tech startup United We Care (UWC) today announced the launch of United-MedASR, an advanced Medical Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) model, which sets new global benchmarks for clinical accuracy. The startup also announced it has completed the full integration of United-MedASR in its flagship mental health and wellness tech platform Stella.
The company added that the new voice-based conversational AI capabilities powered by United-MedASR will give Stella an unmatched precision in the medical domain. United-MedASR is by far the world’s most accurate system of its kind, with an up to 98% reduced Word Error Rate (WER) than comparable systems from Meta, Nvidia, and Google.
Stella’s conversational AI capabilities are purpose-built for mental health applications upon the open-source AI model Llama. The platform can understand 29 different languages along with regional dialects or thick accents. The startup says it has custom trained its model with several billions of medical tokens to change the weights and biases of the foundational Llama model. The model has further undergone human reinforced learning by practicing psychiatrists in the US, India, and Australia, with the goal to make it precisely aligned to the needs of mental health professionals and patients.
“Alongside other tokens, we have also trained our MSR model through 10 million-plus actual voice conversations that have taken place on the Stella platform worldwide over the last three years,” said Ritu Mehrotra, Founder and CEO of United We Care. “As a result, our model’s ability to understand thick regional accents and advanced clinical terminology is not only unmatched but also miles ahead of anything available worldwide today.”
In healthcare, the margin for error is razor thin. Traditional ASR tools, with error rates of 3–5%, posed risks to patient safety. United-MedASR achieves an industry-leading 0.5% error rate, ensuring accuracy in critical interactions.
Stella’s new world class automatic speed recognition capabilities will deliver significant benefits to all users. For psychiatrists, Stella can now drastically reduce the time needed to complete intake process of a new patient as patients can complete core assessments like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) 7 Assessment Test via Stella at home, before arriving at the clinic. Stella can also record, transcribe, and summarize notes taken by therapists during a session, significantly freeing up their bandwidth to see more patients. For patients, Stella now works as a preclinical or subclinical tool to seek basic help at any time.
“Stella now works as psychological first-aid during moments of high anxiety or depression as experienced by a patient. It can even sense the severity of the anxiety or depression and automatically set up an appointment with the clinician as well,” Ritu added.
Launched in 2021, Stella is currently available as a desktop clinical administration tool for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, and as a mental health companion app for patients. UWC says Texas-based Legacy Community Health and several other large hospital chains in the US are currently using Stella.
The startup also offers Stella as an employee mental wellness platform to large enterprises, including companies in the finance and cosmetics sectors. According to UWC, Stella serves over 3 million enterprise users globally.
The annual global direct spending on mental Health and wellness is estimated at US$500 billion. Further, the total economic loss due to mental health issues is estimated to be about US$6 trillion per year.
About United We Care
United We Care is a Deep tech with clinical depth in the mental health space. With its AI platform, Stella, the company aims to transform mental healthcare landscape and empower each person to navigate their mental health with dignity, resilience and compassion. United We Care has presence in the US, Australia and India. For more information, please visit https://www.unitedwecare.com
Media Contact
United We Care contactus@unitedwecare.com Unit 303, 10645 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, 90024 https://www.unitedwecare.com
